What's a Spirit When It's at Home?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Lord of Spirits

Episode: What's a Spirit When It's at Home?
Date: October 14, 2022
Hosts: Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick & Fr. Stephen DeYoung
Main Theme: Exploring the meaning, nature, and significance of "spirit" in the Orthodox Christian tradition, distinguishing ancient conceptions from modern misunderstandings, and explaining how this connects to personal, communal, and cosmic reality.

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Overview

This episode tackles the profound question: What is a spirit? The hosts deconstruct popular, often vague or cartoonish cultural notions of "spirit," examining scriptural language, philology, ancient worldviews, and Orthodox theology. They trace the transition from ancient understanding (where "spirit" animates all levels of reality) to modern materialist reductionism. The show culminates in a powerful articulation of how the Holy Spirit is the animating, organizing reality of the Church and, by extension, how spirits (good or evil) shape both individuals and societies.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Word Study: What Does "Spirit" Mean?

(04:16–35:00)

• Multiple Language Roots

  • Hebrew: Elohim (Gods, spiritual beings), ruach (wind, breath, spirit)
  • Greek: pneuma (breath, wind, spirit)
  • Latin: spiritus (breath, wind, spirit)
  • English: ghost (from proto-Germanic, connoting fear/terror; unrelated to "gust" = to pour)

• The semantic field of "spirit" is rooted in the idea of wind, breath, or unseen agency. For ancient peoples, “spirit” wasn’t just a synonym for “ghost” but an animating force.

• Translation Difficulties: For example, Genesis 3:8’s “spirit of the day” gets wildly divergent English renderings due to this ambiguity.

“Our purpose here is to explain what a spirit is. And so we're going to start with the words and see what clues that gives us...”
— Fr. Stephen DeYoung (04:18)

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2. Examples in Scripture: "Spirit" as Category Not Description

(35:00–51:00)

• The word "spirit" refers variously to God, gods, angels, demons, and human souls—but this doesn't clarify the precise nature of what a spirit is.
• Human spirits can persist after death; angels and demons are purely spiritual beings, but all are described as “created.”
• The Holy Spirit is called “spirit” analogically—not simply another being in a class called "spirits." The scriptural witness distinguishes the Holy Spirit (uncreated, divine) from all creatures.

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3. What Isn't a Spirit? Debunking Modern (Materialist/Cartoon) Misconceptions

(51:16–66:06)

• Common media tropes (e.g., Star Wars “Force Ghosts”, visible misty glows, ectoplasm, etc.) have no basis in Scripture or ancient Christian thought.
• Spirits are not “humans without bodies,” translucent clones, or forms made of special “spirit matter” (aether, quintessence).
• The desire to “make spirits into humans” is a persistent category error.

“These are either not exactly a human now until the resurrection, or not a human at all… Spirit is not a subcategory of human.”
— Fr. Stephen DeYoung (64:07)

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4. From the Bottom Up: Consciousness, Will, and the Structure of Created Reality

(70:01–96:01)

• Drawing from Thomas Nagel’s “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, the hosts argue consciousness is not binary (on/off), but a spectrum existing in animals, perhaps even plants, and rudimentary systems.
• Human consciousness is emergent—built on “lower” orders of consciousness (organs, cells, bacteria).
• The human spirit is the “organizing principle” that coordinates, directs, and unifies these lower-level wills and actions.
• “Spirit” names this higher-order consciousness, will, and energy (activity) that animates and directs a body—or, by analogy, any organized system.

“The human organism, you, the listener, are made up of a big pile of interconnected small consciousnesses that are all operating together. And then what we think of as our consciousness...comes in over the top of all of those.”
— Fr. Stephen DeYoung (89:26)

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5. Emergent Spirits: Families, Societies, and the Spirit of the Age

(96:01–116:03)

• Just as a person’s spirit animates and organizes the collection of cells/organs, so too can collective units (families, cities, nations) have a “spirit.”
• These are not merely metaphors—the “spirit of a place” or “spirit of the age” (zeitgeist) can override individual wills and have agency.
  • Examples: Crowds doing things individuals wouldn’t; cultures persisting in patterns beyond rational explanation.
• Evil spirits (demons) can and do become the animating principle of societies, systems, or eras (e.g. the Holocaust, ideological violence, etc.).
• The biblical and patristic response is not simply rational persuasion, but exorcism and re-alignment under the Holy Spirit.

“We need to remove the spirit that is there animating it now. Then understand how to invite a different one.”
— Fr. Stephen DeYoung (108:41)

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6. The Holy Spirit: The Spirit That Animates the Church (and the Cosmos)

(124:43–150:05)

• The Holy Spirit is not a creature among creatures: He is the uncreated, divine Person whose activity (will and energy) enlivens, animates, and organizes the Church as Christ’s body.
• Paul's analogy in 1 Corinthians 12 (“body of Christ”) is not just a metaphor—it’s a description of how the Spirit binds diverse persons into one living organism.
• Church Tradition is “the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church,” not a rigid set of rules, but a living, animating reality.
• The Holy Spirit empowers the “gifts” (charismata) of every member for the well-being of the whole.

“What we mean in the Orthodox Church by tradition is not a bunch of secret stuff that we decided not to write down in the Bible... but the life of the Holy Spirit in the church.”
— Fr. Stephen DeYoung (136:47)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Language and Meaning:
  “In Hebrew and really in Akkadian behind it, and in all these cognate languages, there is this connection always between the idea of a wind and the idea of a spirit.”
  — Fr. Stephen DeYoung (17:44)
• On Modern Misunderstandings:
  “All of those are wrong. Zero spirits, right, are really portrayed that way in ancient literature or scripture.”
  — Fr. Stephen DeYoung (54:36)
• On Individualism vs. Spiritual Reality:
  “If we try to use the kind of thinking that we use to create taxonomies of material stuff and we try to turn that towards what the church is, then it's a total category error.”
  — Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick (140:32)
• On Hope, Spirit, and Renewal:
  “We always are people of hope… it is that the spirit of God moves, that the holy ones who are obedient to him move. And there is a renewal that occurs centered in the people of God and that that can benefit the whole world.”
  — Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick (153:39)
• On the Purpose of the Show:
  “We're not here to take the temperature, we're here to change the thermostat... The kind of transformation that needs to happen isn't going to be possible for me... under those other paradigms and ways of thinking.”
  — Fr. Stephen DeYoung (157:40 & 166:08)

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Key Timestamps for Major Segments

• 05:01: The many uses of "Elohim" in Scripture
• 10:21: The semantic range of "ruach" (spirit/wind/breath)
• 30:00: Etymology Corner: "Ghost"
• 51:16: Apophatic approach—what spirits are not
• 70:01: Shifting to the “bottom up” approach—consciousness in creation
• 95:00: Defining the human spirit as animating awareness
• 103:10: Collective spirits: families, peoples, the spirit of the age
• 124:43: The unique and analogical role of the Holy Spirit
• 135:05: Tradition as the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church
• 150:49: Final reflections: How spirits animate cultures and the call of Christians to open themselves to renewal through the Holy Spirit

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Final Takeaways

• The Orthodox Christian vision of spirit stretches far beyond “ghosts” or vague “energy.”
• “Spirit” is the principle of organization, will and agency at every level—from human person to community to cosmos.
• The Holy Spirit, as Lord of Spirits, animates the Church, bringing life, unity, and synergy among its members.
• We are always being animated by some spirit—either the Holy Spirit towards Christ and salvation, or dark spirits towards corruption.
• The episode ends with a stirring call to open ourselves to authentic transformation by re-encountering the world through the paradigm of the Orthodox faith, “setting the thermostat,” and daring to believe in real renewal, both personal and communal.

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For Deeper Exploration

• Re-read 1 Corinthians 12 with this understanding of “spirit” and “body.”
• Reflect on where in your life, church, or society you see evidence of good or evil spirits animating collective action.
• Consider: How might you more consciously cooperate with the Holy Spirit as the animating will and life of the Church and the new, redeemed humanity?

Transcript

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He will be a staff for the righteous with which for them to stand and not to fall. And he will be the light of the nations and the hope of those whose hearts are troubled. All who dwell on the earth will fall down and worship him. And they will praise and bless and celebrate with song the lord of spirits. First Enoch, chapter 48, verses 4 through 5. The modern world doesn't acknowledge but is nevertheless haunted by spirits and angels, demons and saints. In our time, many yearn to break free of the prison of a flat secular materialism, to see and to know reality as it truly is. What is this spiritual reality like? How do we engage with it? Well, how do we permeate everyday life with spiritual presence? Orthodox Christian priests Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Fr. Steven DeYoung host this live call in show focused on enchantment in creation. The the union of the seen and unseen as made by God and experienced by mankind throughout history. Welcome to the Lord of Spirits.

Good evening giant killers and dragon slayers. You are listening to the Lord of Spirits podcast. My co Host Father Steven DeYoung is with me from Lafayette, Louisiana and I'm Father Andrew Stephen Damick in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. And if you're listening to us live, you can call in at 855-AF-RADIO. That's 855-237-2346. And Matyska Trudy is taking those calls and we're going to get to them in the second part of our show. And now a word from our sponsor. Lord of Spirits is brought to you by our listeners with help from the Theoria School of Filmmaking. Theoria School of Filmmaking is the first orthodox film school. The primary instructor is Jonathan Jackson, a faithful orthodox Christian speaker, writer and five time Emmy award winner. To learn more about theoria, please visit theoriafilm.org that's t h e o r.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I a film.org I feel like we should, we should clarify something.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that's because people might make an assumption because the area film school or school of filmmaking, sorry is through a Christian educational institution. This is not teaching you how to make like pure flicks or like those straight to DVD movies at Walmart. Like that is true. He's teaching you how to make good things.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That is indeed the idea.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

If Rob Zombie had gone to the Thayeria school of filmmaking, that Munsters movie would not exist. We could safely say.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I hadn't thought about saying that before today, but now I'm going to say it at least once a week.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So tonight everyone, we're going to be Talking about spirits, this is yet another word that gets used both in Christian contexts and also in the general culture that almost never gets defined very precisely. Certainly not with any reference to how ancient peoples would have understood it in their own languages, times and cultures. Is a spirit a ghost? Some kind of disembodied pale green being that's basically human but lacking materiality? Is spirit just an impersonal metaphor for observable collective phenomena like school spirit or Father Stephen? Is this all just some tired Scooby Doo plot that would have come off if it weren't for those meddling kids? What do you think?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm going to decline to comment on that last one because I feel that like mermaids and hobbits, Scooby Doo is now a culture war minefield.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So I'm just gonna steer clear of it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right? I mean, other than, you know, we could all agree Scrappy Doo, not a good addition to the show.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. What was that?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All that I think is safe.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That was the, the shark jumping moment for Scooby Doo. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So I'm trying to play it safe now. I'm gonna get myself into trouble at some point in the show, but here at the beginning. Right, let's, let's, let's play it safe.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So, so where do we begin?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, well, so we're going to start by talking about the words that get translated as spirit. Right. Because our, our purpose here is to explain what a spirit is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so we're going to start with the words and we're going to see what clues though that gives us and proceed from there as things get more and more complicated.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But one that we talked about way back in the long ago time, in the before time, when the grupps were still around, was.

The way the word Elohim in Hebrew is used in the Old Testament.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, that's a word some people get excited about. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So the.

That word is translated in different ways. The normal. Probably the. Well, not probably the most common way it gets translated, even though it's a plural, is as God with a capital G. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because, you know, obviously the Old Testament talks about the God of Israel a lot. And so that's the way it's most commonly transmitted. Because that's whom it is most commonly referring to or to whom it is most commonly referring.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Don't want to end a sentence with a preposition.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You can. I won't turn you in this time.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In deference to you, sir, I will not do that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Not One of those rules that I. That I like to stand on. So it's.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's something up with which I will not put.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, exactly.

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And in that case, as we've mentioned before, the reason for it being a plural, you will hear this plural of majesty thing, which, technically speaking, doesn't exist in Hebrew, and you'll have some pedant point that out to you. But there is something in Hebrew that we've talked about on the show before called a superlative plural or an intensive plural where something is made plural. The place where I remember we talked about this, other than the word Elohim, was behemoth or behemoth, beast of beasts. Right. Which, yeah, technically.

Is a plural, a feminine plural.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So, yeah, weird.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Technically could be translated cows.

But is used with masculine pronouns. That's why I refer to behemoth as a he and is used to refer to one.

One being. And so we understand that to be, as you said, the beast of beasts or the mountains of mountains. The greatest one, the big one, the super beast.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Apparently, since it's October, it's Rob Zombie night. I don't know.

But there are places in the Old Testament on anybody's reading where it is just being used as the plural for God. So it's used to mean gods. It's referring to gods of the nations.

The gods of some particular nation, the household gods of an idolater. There are places, but it's the same word. There are also places where that term is used to refer to angels. Both fallen and unfallen.

Are just referred to as gods. A lot of these are hidden in English translations because people get squeamish about them.

Because. And we won't go back all through this again. As we talked about, the category of monotheism is a late one, but then once it came around, you know, we can't say gods to refer to angels because that makes it sound like we're polytheists. So we translate it. They'll change it in English translation to angels or spirits or something else.

And then finally, as we've talked about before, there are a few places where Elohim is used to refer to the spirits of deceased humans.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Like when the witch of Endor calls up the prophet Samuel or the.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And we talked about this, and this is super controversial, so we're not going through it all again. But they're back in the. Back in the catalog. The Lord of Spirits back catalog. We talked about the ritual for a slave sort of becoming a permanent member of a household now in which they're brought before, essentially, the ancestors of the. The clan.

And so anybody who hasn't listened to that episode, if you're freaking out, just go listen to the back catalog. You'll find there's transcripts, too. You can search them.

So what that means is that essentially, if you. If you loop all these together, as we've said, the word elohim is just used to refer to what we might call spiritual beings.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right? Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And you know that because we're going through the different words that are used, we need to go through this one. It doesn't give us a lot of help in terms of what a spirit is, because all we've basically said is that this word is used to mean spirit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Here's an example of things.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So now we'll move on to the words that are specifically translated as spirit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So we've got Hebrew, we've got Greek, we've got Latin. These are kind of the main ones. And we'll talk about English.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, yes. In a special segment.

So the Hebrew word that's generally translated as spirit is ruach.

And.

Those of you who may go to Antiochian churches may immediately recognize the Arabic cognate word.

For spirit.

That word ruach literally means wind.

And so you get some interesting translations sometimes in places where it occurs. Right. So when they're able to train, like when it's talking about the spirit of God.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or the Holy Spirit, or it's very clearly talking about a spirit, they'll translate it spirit. But other places where. Where on an immediate surface. Read.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Spirit doesn't seem to necessarily make immediate sense. They'll try and do something with wind. And one of the most infamous examples of this is in Genesis 3, 8. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This is so weird.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which is where.

Christ comes walking in the garden to find Adam and Eve, or man and woman, as they're known at that time.

And it says literally in the Hebrew, it says that. That he comes walking in the spirit of the day.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So the word there is ruach.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. Rachayum.

So he comes in the spirit of the day. Now, when you look at different English translations, you will not only find various different translations, but you will find exactly opposite translations.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Like some of them it says in the cool of the day, and others it literally. It says in the heat of the day.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Or the breezy part of the day.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

As the wind was blowing. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Like what. What is. I mean, that's so bizarre.

I've always heard it. I mean, I think the one that I've heard the most as I was growing up was in the cool of the day. And maybe that's what's. I'd have to go look at the.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Kj, probably King James, because that's what.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I grew up hearing is that particular Bible.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. And I think part of what was.

Motivating that was both a thought that it referred to the time of the day, but also I think that they're trying to paint a picture like, oh, there's a cool breeze blowing in the afternoon, and so God goes for a walk, like we all do.

This is common.

Yeah. So in the past.

We have recommended for people who don't want.

Massive amounts of student debt, like I have to learn ancient languages, but who want to do serious Bible study to get the Net Bible with the full notes.

Because they have, of course, extensive.

Notes on these kinds of things.

And so the note on this verse.

Is kind of interesting because.

They sort of go all over the place in the possible.

Ways you could do something with it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm going to read this, everybody, but don't get lost. Okay, we'll revisit the important parts.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So this is what the Net Bible says about this particular word. The expression is traditionally rendered cool of the day because the Hebrew word ruach can mean wind.

Yu cassuto. So this is obviously one of the scholars concludes after lengthy discussion that the expression refers to the afternoon when it became hot and the sun was beginning to decline. JJ Niehaus offers a different interpretation of the phrase relating yom, usually understood as day, to an Akkadian cognate, umu, which means storm, and translate the phrase in the wind of the storm. If Nihaus is correct, then God is not pictured as taking an afternoon stroll through the orchard, but as coming in a powerful windstorm to confront the man and woman with their rebellion. In this case, the phrase kol yuvah, the sound of the Lord may refer to God's thunderous roar, which typically accompanies his appearance in the stor. Do battle or render judgment. I had never heard of that last bit before, ever.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Only vaguely.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Do I have a heat of the day in the back of my head somewhere?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

And you can sense the influence of the Yahweh as storm God stuff in there too.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, the sound of Yahweh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

Him appearing in a storm to do battle or render judgment is typically accompanied by a thunderous roar.

Give me an example anyway.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But.

So there is something, as usually happens even with people who are way off, but who are serious scholars, there is Something there that he has keyed in on. Not entirely for. For the right reason, I don't think, but there's something there he is. He has keyed in on.

And that is a somewhat different understanding of what the day means.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because it isn't.

There is the definite article there in Hebrew. And when you see references in the Old Testament, for example, to the day.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Not like one day, like we get in Genesis 1, like a day, but the day, they're almost always referring to the day of Yahweh, the day of the Lord.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, the time where he's going to bring justice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. When he's going to visit. Right, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like waiting for him.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And so I would submit that you can translate it as he comes walking in the spirit of the day. So Niehaus has indirectly. Right. And colored by sort of his other presuppositions, he has at least pulled out this idea that there is. What's going on here in that phrase is that there's this judgment motif.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That justice is. Is now going to be rendered right, Things are going to be set right, things are going to be corrected that have. That have gone wrong.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But it is also true, even though here I'm saying you can understand it in spirit, there are also places where it just clearly means wind.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, sure.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's clearly just what they're saying.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sometimes a wind is just a wind.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So in Hebrew and really in Akkadian behind it, and in all these cognate languages, there is this connection always between the idea of a wind and the idea of a spirit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Coming out of these Semitic languages.

So then when we move to Greek and you get to the word pneumma, I'm going to use modern Greek pronunciation for the sake of our Greek listeners and them not keelhauling me.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The Erasmian keelhaul. Tonight on a very special Lord of Spirits.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So I would be hoisted on my own petard.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Nice, nice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

I caught that reference. The word pneuma means.

Breath, wind, or blow.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. So almost the same semantic space, semantic range, but. But not quite. But still pretty much the same breath, wind.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But here's part of why that's important. Because when the time came to translate the word ruach into Greek.

In places where it clearly is referring to a spirit in the sense that we use the word spirit, they chose the Greek word that means breath, wind, blow.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hmm.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So what that tells us is sometimes a word has an original meaning and then starts to get used by analogy for something else. And ends up losing its original meaning.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Like there's the meaning of the word drifts and migrates. Right. So the fact that that translation choice was made means that as we're getting into the third century B.C.

That.

That idea of wind and breath was still being connected to the idea of spirit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It hadn't just shifted into being a word that means spirit and lost those other meanings.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That, of course, also, once we get into Greek, raises the question of the relationship between phnma and sikhi. Soul or soul. Right. That we translate as soul.

And this is the clearest place to see. This probably is once again in Genesis, but in Genesis 2. And this is also pretty well applies to the relationship between the Hebrew ruach and nefesh.

Which is the word that gets translated soul from Hebrew.

And that's where when.

God creates Adam, he breathes into.

Adam's nostril, and once he has breathed into him, he becomes a living soul.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so when we make a distinction between soul and spirit, we're making essentially a distinction between spirit as the animating force.

In a being and the soul as the life itself. So between animating force and life itself.

So that's a distinction you can make. Right. At least in speech. Aristotle has that category, distinctions possible only in speech. Right. Some things that you can't divide in reality, but you can divide in how you talk about them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It's a conceptual distinction that one can make.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. So like talking about.

A ray of light, it's brilliance.

You could pull these apart. Right. But you can't actually. They're not different things. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so this is why the fact that this is a possible distinction between animating force and the life itself is why you find in different church fathers.

Different ways of talking about whether a human person is body, soul, spirit, body, soul, body, spirit. Right. These. These different ways of. Of divvying things up. Because some fathers will, for some particular reason, want to make this distinction, like between spirit and soul, between a person's life and the animating force within them. Right.

And so they're making some kind of argument that. Right. They're not writing sort of this objective treatise of. No, there are these three things. And if you say there are not these three things or label them differently, you are wrong.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Not an anatomy of the invisible element of the human. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. It's. It's. They're making some point down the road, and in it, for the purposes of making that point, they make this distinction.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or because they're making a different point. They don't need to make that distinction. That distinction isn't relevant to what they're talking about, and so they don't make it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Like, if I were just to say human beings have both a material and an immaterial aspect, then I might just say we consist of body and soul.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And then if someone came, again, being pedantic, and said, oh, are you denying that man has a spirit, then.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They would clearly not understand. Right. What you're saying.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So this is not a contradiction. And a good example in modern Internet discussion.

For this kind of distinction making is the perennial question of is blank a sandwich?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Are hot dogs a sandwich?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Our hot dogs a sandwich. Our hamburger is a sandwich. Is a burrito a sandwich?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because it's wrapped in burrito a sandwich.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. I've participated in many of these and I have won every argument. But.

There'S a whole. You know, is there a video of that? Because we call a chicken sandwich a sandwich, but a hamburger that has the exact same ingredients other than beef versus chicken, we would say that's a hamburger and not a sandwich. Inconsistent. Anyway.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So. But there's not beyond just sophistry that I would use to win those arguments. There is not an actual right or wrong.

There is no metaphysics or ontology under which something absolutely is a sandwich or absolutely is not a sandwich.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, I prefer the argument from authority where it actually has to have a seal of approval from the Earl of Sandwich himself.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You're an originalist when it comes to sandwiches. So any ingredient which he did not encounter should not be on a sandwich by that argument.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's correct.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But that's why we're using that as an example.

So.

No one who makes the distinction between soul and spirit thinks they're separate things. They're like objects.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

These are distinctions made in speech for a particular purpose. In the same way that we categorize different foods in different ways for particular reasons of use and convenience and that kind of thing.

So that's Greek. There's a lot of consistency there. And then there's even more consistency.

When you get to Latin and you get to the word spiritus, which is where we get the English word spirit, obviously.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And I mean, we should say that the Greek word pnevma, we have it in English with words like pneumatic and pneumonia, which all have to do with pneumatic and pnevmonia. Oh, excuse me, excuse me. I had to go to hospital. For pnevmonia. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, Greeks would complain if you pronounced it that way, I guarantee it.

But.

So spiritus also means.

Breath or wind or blow.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Pretty much exactly parallel to the Greek.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Now, one small difference is that Latin generally. This isn't 100% true, but the Latin language.

Essentially treats spiritus and anima as synonyms, anima being the word for soul.

Now, despite that, because of what we just said about soul and spirit, there are authors who will use them not as synonyms, and use them in some technical way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Latin authors.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. To distinguish things. Right. But linguistically. Right. In Hebrew and Greek, we're talking about different words that have different cognitive domains. With spiritus and anima in the language, we're not. Right. But because, of course, things are translated into Latin. And you have, for example, Latin theologians who are influenced by earlier traditions. Right. They will sometimes make more technical distinctions between those words.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And I mean, and we do have English words that come from the Latin that mean exactly the same kind of concept. Right. So, like respiration. And my favorite, conspiracy, which means breathing together, literally. But no one uses it that way, strangely enough. I don't know why.

Come, let us breathe together, and we will overthrow a government.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Uh. Oh, we're on a watch list now?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I didn't say which government.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Could be student government.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I actually was impeached as class president at one point.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Are you serious?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm dead serious. I wrote out the impeachment, though.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's glorious. You were acquitted, were you?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, no. Well, it's a long story. We won't go into it here, but it did happen. Student government can be a messy thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There's a bunch of people now doing deep Google searches to see if they can discover your high school yearbook.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't think it's online.

They would discover many interesting things. Like, there was the first day of all the clubs was Picture Day. So I went to every single club on Picture Day. So it looks like I was in every club in the school, even though I never went to another meeting.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So I was, for five minutes in Latin Club. There was no Latin Club except for the day for Picture Day.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, well, there you go.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Hey, we have something in common.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Falsifying yearbook evidence.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's right. Spiritus. Yeah. Back to Latin.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, no, now we need to move on from Latin.

To a special segment.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, that's right. It's time, everybody.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Father Andrews, Etymology corner. Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's been a long time since we've had Etymology Corner. And we're going to be Talking about English, the English word ghost. Ghost.

It's a great word in English, and we tend to use it these days to refer to something we're about to talk about later.

But traditionally, ghost refers to spirits. Right? Just. It's the general word for spirit.

It actually has a kind of a different origin from these other words we've been talking about from Hebrew, Greek and Latin, where the idea of wind and breathing and spirit are all kind of connected together. In English, it does not have that same origin. Father Stephen asked me, is ghost related to gust? And I am sorry to say they are not related. They are not cognates. They do sound a little similar, it's true. But this is what we call a false friend. False friend. It'll betray you in the end, everybody.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Unlike Burton Guster, who was a true friend who would never betray anyone.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So ghost in. In English, we've also, you know, we've got, for instance, the. The German word geist, which is essentially the same ghost in English, comes ultimately from a proto West Germanic word, geist, G, A, I, S, T. Geist, which comes from a proto Germanic geistaz, which ultimately comes from a proto Indo European root that I'm not going to try to pronounce, but that protohypigo Sanskrit, man. I know, I know. It's like.

I don't know. Yeah, I'm not. Yeah, sorry. And that one actually ultimately comes from a word that refers to anger or agitation, which it kind of makes you wonder, like, well, how did we get from that to the sense of spirit? And it's. The overlapping concept is fear or terror. Right. So the idea that when you encounter a spirit, this is what you feel. And so that's how we get the modern English word ghost. Interestingly, you know, we mentioned gust. Right, Gust. Actually, it comes from a root that refers to pouring. So gust and gush, for instance, are cognate with each other and have this idea of a pouring out. So gust is a sudden pouring out of wind. But, yeah, alas, they are not connected together. But, yeah, ghost does have a cognate in Sanskrit that refers to anger or hatred, and one even in Persian that refers to something that's ugly, hateful, or disgusting.

But generally in Germanic languages, it's all spirit. It just means spirits. But there is not this sense of breath or wind in the English versions. Fun, though, especially if you read stuff that's early Modern English. And in Middle English, you'll see the word ghostly and used exactly to mean the way we would use the word spiritual. So a Very ghostly person does not mean someone that haunts your house and, you know, Casper the friendly ghost kind of thing, but rather a ghostly person is a very spiritual person and you could even refer to having your ghostly father. So I'm just going to suggest to everybody listening at home right now that next time you contact your father confessor that you refer to him as your ghostly father and just sort of see what happens. I'm just throwing that out there for everybody.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm ghostly but not religious.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There you go. Exactly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

That's a very ghostly thing for you to say.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thank you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I just feel so ghostly today. Yeah. It's too bad this usage has kind of gone away. But that's why, of course, you see Holy Ghost in early English Bibles, because ghost in that period did not mean something spooky or whatever. It just was the word for spirits.

Later on kind of gets separated out from. From the same concept as spirit to refer to a particular kind of spirit, which we'll. We'll talk about that. That concept. But yeah, so there you go. That's. That's English ghost.

Father Andrew's etymology.

See, we've got theme music for both before and after.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm glad you had that ready.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I was briefly nervous that you wouldn't have it ready. Not even so much because it would have let down the listeners, but I think you would have let yourself down.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You better believe it. Absolutely.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

If you hadn't had it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So there you go. So you've got Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English for this word for spirit.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And we haven't gotten a ton of help with our main question yet because, well, basically what we've gotten is that it has something to do with wind, maybe.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Well, we've never really been known to rush on this show.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right, right. We're taking our time. I'm just summarizing where we're at. Here's where we're at. Not a lot.

So, yeah, we're not focused on productivity here.

So now we could turn to something that maybe will give us some more help. Right. We looked at the words, so let's look at some examples. Right. So we look at some examples of spirits. For example, in the scriptures.

Maybe we can look at them and kind of see what they have in common and that might help us define spirit as a category. Right. Or something.

Spoilers. It won't help us much, but we're going to go through this anyway.

So one example would be human spirits.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And those aren't entirely disembodied Right. So we hear about a person, like a living person's spirit. Right. Like Adam.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But then there are also.

The spirits of people that.

Continue to exist, if exist is the right word. Right.

Continue to be. To do things after the physical death. Right. The human in question.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And you know, we sing, like, for instance, when we're doing a Trisailian memorial, we sing with the spirits of the righteous made perfect. Right. We're talking about departed humans.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And in that case, since the spirits of the righteous made perfect, those are good ones. Yes, right. There's also bad ones. It's true. So you've got the rephaim ending with og.

Who was the last of them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And who we also know from a really creepy Ugaritic tablet where they were offering animal sacrifices to the rephaim so that they would let the newly dead king pass into the underworld.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Appeasement.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Isaiah mentions the rephaim rising up to meet.

The devil as he was thrown down into the underworld.

Don't try and figure out the timing on that because just like we've said, what time zone is heaven in? What. What time zone is Hades in? Right.

And of course, it's always a good time to once again mention that quote from St. John Chrysostom where he talks about.

How people become demons.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which is there was at that time a belief that if someone died a violent death or died in some horrible way, their spirit would come back and be malicious. Right. And that's of course, what a demon is. Right. It's a. From a. From a Christian's perspective, the word daimon just kind of means spirit in Greek. But from our perspective as Christians, and from the Jewish perspective.

Those are.

Malicious spirits. So that belief from St. John Chrysostom's time is kind of still around today. If you ever have watched a horror movie that you have people who die some kind of violent death and come back and haunt places. Right.

And do malicious things. But St. John Chrysostom says that's not how they become a demon. Someone becomes a demon by living a life like the demons, by becoming like the demons in their life through their sin and wickedness and giving themselves over to the passions.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Live like a demon now and you will be a demon after you die. That's what St. John Chrysostom literally says. Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Literally, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Not figuratively.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Not figuratively.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Literally.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So there's one example of spirits. Right.

Then there are, of course, as we mentioned, there are angelic or demonic spirits that were never humans. Right.

And we know, according to the scriptures that these are spirits, regardless of their rank, regardless of fallen or unfallen, these are spirits that were created by God, by Yahweh, the God of Israel.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. They're not eternal, they're not uncreated. They are created.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Even though they're sometimes called Elohim, sometimes called gods. Right. In the Old Testament and other related literature, they are not gods the way he is God, capital G. Right. He is other because they're created by him. Now, of course, this is in.

This is the biblical correction to the broader ancient pagan world, where they agreed, they did not think that the spirits they worshiped were eternal.

They not only believed that they came into existence at some point. We mentioned in the Thunder Gods episode that there are several places that were identified as pilgrimage sites where Zeus was born, for example.

So they believed they came into being at some point and they could die, they could be destroyed, they could be defeated. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Going forward. And often, as we've talked about, not only were they said to sort of reproduce with each other, but there were. Was the succession myth, and sometimes, like in Hesiod, multiple layers of succession where it was acknowledged within the stories that previously some other God had been the one that was worshiped as the most high God, but now this other God came in and overthrew him. And now he is. And now his son came and overthrew him.

And so.

Even in. Right. The disagreement between, for example, the Old Testament texts and pagan polytheism from the surrounding nations is not that they said their gods were eternal or even that their most high God was eternal. And Israel said, no, it's Yahweh. It's that both had this layer of.

Spiritual or divine beings that came into existence.

And then in Israel there is this other beyond being. Right. There is Yahweh who created them all.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And we should emphasize too, that just because the pagan stories say things, for instance, about them reproducing with each other, that's not what's actually happening. That's simply the story within those pagan religions.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know? Yeah, yeah. Because they don't have reproductive faculties.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

However you want to understand that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And those are late stories.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because as we've talked about before, in reality there would be one or two gods of a given place. Right. But then as larger social units come together, they integrate their beliefs in those gods. And how do you do that? Right. Is it just a bunch of competing individual gods? Well, no. You construct this family tree, you connect them together. Right. So even those parts of the story are sort of.

Late to the party in that way. Right, but yeah, but, yeah, so this idea of contingent gods, Right. It's that the nations around.

Israel did not have this idea of anything beyond that layer of these sort of contingent gods.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right, yeah. All their gods were by their own definition, kind of lesser. Right, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So even like the word, the word daimon in Greek, which was generally applied to.

You know, spirits of, you know, this or that lake or this or that forest. Right. Sort of lower degree spirits was sometimes applied to Zeus.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So there was less hierarchy there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Then there was no kind of ontological hierarchy, no hierarchy of being there. It was just.

A question of sphere of authority or what have you. And that could change.

So then the other example, the big example, of course, from Scripture of a spirit is the Holy Spirit.

And it's worth. Because this doesn't get talked about as much by anybody, including me, the section on Christ and religion of the apostles is a lot longer than the section on the Holy Spirit, you've probably noticed.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I did notice that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because frankly, there's less about the Holy Spirit spirit in pre Christian.

Material.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Just not as mentioned in the Old Testament.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. Appears, but was not the subject of a lot of discussion.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And there's various ways to approach why that is because of the view I have.

Vis a vis ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism's understanding of there being multiple hypostasis of Yahweh, the God of Israel. I think it's mainly because the idea of Yahweh and the Spirit of Yahweh being a hypostasis of Yahweh, like just made sense to them. So there was less cause for discussion.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like contained within the name, the Spirit of God was sort of the relationship they needed to understand. Whereas the. The two powers in heaven literature trying to understand the relationship between Father and Son. Right. That was more complicated, more murky until the Incarnation. Right, right. And so there was much more cause to debate and discuss and speculate.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In Second Temple Jewish circles. But.

Because it's sort of. Let's talk about. It's worth making a few. Right. Clear points here about who the Holy Spirit is in Scripture. And as that's been sort of defined in theological terms by the Church.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, in the 4th century you get a decent amount of theological reflection and definition on the Holy Spirit.

Like, you know, St. Basil, of course, he's got a whole text on this. Right. Called on The Holy Spirit, St. Gregory the Theologian, he. He talks about this as well. It's confirmed in the.

Second Ecumenical Council that the Holy Spirit is. Is divine.

So. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so St. Basil's ultimately going to say that the Holy Spirit is the image of the Father in a similar but not identical way to the way that the Son is. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that's the difference between the Son being generated, the Son being begotten.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And the Holy Spirit proceeding. And as the Fathers all say, if you ask me exactly what that means.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Who knows?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Yeah. I think one of them says if you try to figure out the difference between the two, then you'll go insane.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I can't remember who that is, but. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So don't try this at home, kids.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. To put that the terms that we were just using and that we use now fairly commonly on the show. Right. The Holy Spirit is a hypostasis of Yahweh, the God of Israel, and he is seen in the Old Testament as the presence of God, the Theophanic glory cloud in the Tabernacle and the temple as the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud that leads Israel as the tongues of flame at Pentecost and descending. And the manner of his descent was like the descent of a dove at Christ's baptism. I say that specifically because the Holy Spirit did not turn into a bird.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. It's okay. Iconographically to depict this in this way.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But that's only in that icon, by the way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Don't go around painting birds. That's not the Holy Spirit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But. So that is the.

Those are the places where we see him. Right. And particularly in terms of the presence, capital P, of God in the tabernacle, in the temple is clearly a place where you see a hypostasis, a localization. This is God himself.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But this is not.

The person that Moses spoke to face to face, and this is not the person who.

Moses was told he could not see and live. Right. This is a third person. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

This is where we're going to do the honorable mention about early Japanese Bibles.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You can go for it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So. Yes. Disclaimer. I do not speak or read Japanese.

But apparently in early Japanese Bibles, Holy Spirit was translated with the phrase that in Japanese would mean divine wind, which now write in Japanese readers or speakers, let us know if this is true or not. It would mean that it's kamikaze. Right. Doesn't that mean divine wind?

So I'm sure we're going to get some um, actuallys in the email over.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This, but send, um, actually send corrections, send hate mail accusing him of racism to Father Andrew Damick.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There we go. Thank you very much. Yeah, yeah.

So then the father, the son and the kamikaze. Yeah, that just doesn't work for me. I can't do that. Yeah, no. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So then our question again. What is a spirit?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Has that helped us? Well, it was kind of a necessary step, I think. But.

I mean.

What does a human spirit, the Holy Spirit, and I mean, from what we've just said and say a demon have in common.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're all spirits. Right. But that doesn't really help us define what that word means. Right, right. So.

So what is a spirit? We're still not getting very close, so let's try what a spirit isn't.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, the apophatic approach. We are orthodox.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We're required to say some apophatic things, but you can't really say things that are apophatic, can you just throw it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, we're going to myth bust some common notions of what. What a spirit is. Right. So.

Probably if you ask somebody today. Right. So our little thumbnail for the episode.

I found a photo of what's. That's what's called spirit photography. That was very popular in the late 19th and early 20th century.

But today, if you ask somebody to picture a spirit, they probably picture something sort of like a force ghost.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Right. So Star wars fans, you may recall in.

Now, let's see. Did they show up in episode four, which was just called Star wars when it first came?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No. But in episode five.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You get, I believe, didn't Obi Wan show up and talk to Yoda?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Obi Wan appears to Luke on Hoth to tell him to go find Yoda. And then you get. In episode six, of course, you get a couple of different Force Ghost appearances. So you get Obi Wan as a force ghost appears to Luke on Dagobah right after Yoda dies. And then at the very end of the film, you get.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Obi Wan.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yoda and Obi Wan and David Prowse in the canonical. That's correct. That show up on the forest moon of Endor. And then, of course, later, force ghosts and stuff. But yes, that's right. So basically you're getting people that are kind of glowy and people shaped and.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They have the same voice, human shape, like an outline of what they looked like when they were alive.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's a deceased person.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's not a deceased Person. If it's an angel, it's an outline of a person with wings.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Michael Landon, perhaps.

Roma Downey. I don't know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Christopher Walken or Patrick Swayze.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Tilda. Tilda Swinton.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But Right. In any of these, it's sort of this hazy outline. Right. And you see this all the time. See this in the Doctor Strange movie. Right. Like, spirit leads the body, and it's just sort of the vaguely translucent outline of the person, including.

Their clothes. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's kind of interesting.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Whatever they were wearing at the time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm really happy, though, that it includes the.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although I do have to think Beetlejuice was not wearing that outfit when he died. But anyway.

So a fair point.

All of those are wrong.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sorry.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, zero spirits, right, Are really portrayed that way in ancient literature or scripture?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, I mean, where do you get this concept of ectoplasm, then? Like, what is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, we'll get there in a second. We'll get there. I do have to say the closest thing you get to that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Might be in.

The Greek conception of Hades, like in Homer's Odyssey. Right. When the shades show up.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, shades.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But what that literally is, is that's the opposite of a glowy outline. That's the person's shadow.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. That's kind of the closest you would get to something like that. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow. I'm having all kinds of Peter Pan issues suddenly.

Huh? Okay. Okay, I'm just gonna work on this while you see your next paragraph.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay. Yeah. That's your own. Yeah.

So. But the question moves to. Right. If a spirit is something that can sometimes be seen.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And it's normally invisible, but if it could sometimes be seen and if it is a finite being.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which we would say, except in the case of the Holy Spirit.

If otherwise it is a finite being, then shouldn't it be made out of something?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. What's its sort of matter?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like a finite being, if it's not made out of something, then how would it be finite?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Yeah. It has to be circumscribed in some way.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so you get these theories, right? So you get, like, aether, like it's an ethereal being. Right. Like, so it's. It's made of aether, which is some kind of air, some kind of thick air.

You get Thomas Aquinas with the quintessence.

Which is just sort of the fifth thing.

That angels are made out of.

And you get.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Not the spirit thing, not the sixth thing. It's the fifth thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The spiritist movement.

Came up with this idea of ectoplasm.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And thank goodness, you know, because now we get Ghostbusters goop.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Apologies to Gwyneth Paltrow.

Why am I apologizing to her? It's a racket. Anyway, send the lawsuits to Father Andrew Damon.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

See, that's one thing I won't take. I'm not going to take any lawsuits. Yeah, yeah. I'm insured. Don't worry.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You will not be served. You will dance back as hard as you have to to make sure you are not served.

But. Yeah. So ectoplasm. Little. If you. If you want to know more about ectoplasm.

In spiritism, they. The various mediums. Is the plural of medium. Still media. If it's. If you're talking about people, I don't.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, man. I don't know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Anyway, various mediums.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You're sending me looking things up now.

Various mediums, larges and smalls.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, right. If.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

If.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

If you don't have.

Like. Like, if you're gonna say, oh, I'm. I'm talking to your departed grandmother.

Person whose name starts with J.

And.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're telling me xyz. Right. People start to catch on that, like, well, is there any actual evidence that you're talking to anything?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or that anything's really happening other than the spooky lighting and the, you know, whatever it is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Mediums, by the way.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Is there any evidence? And so.

Ectoplasm is sort of concocted as a visual representation.

Of the presence of a spirit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Huh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And they would actually concoct some goop that they said was ectoplasm.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, nice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And it would be used.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm having. You can't do that on television flashbacks. Did you ever watch that show?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. It was usually kind of clear and slimy, actually. Not green.

I mean, it's green and ghost slimer. Slime actually, canonically is clear, not green. But anyway.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, that's true. Yeah. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But so. And then it seems to have been first used by mediums who would sort of expel it from their mouth or other bodily orifices.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Nice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

To indicate that a spirit had come upon them. But that was also used as things got sort of more advanced and theatrical. They would sometimes have a person.

Who they give sort of cakey makeup and have stand kind of in the darkness who was supposed to be the dead person. Right.

And they would have that person sort of expel goop in various ways in order to identify this as a Spirit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And people believed it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's just. But people believe all kinds of crazy stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, it's possible.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Now I'm ready to believe just about anything when someone says so and so did this, like. Yeah, I'm sure they did.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. In certain parts of Florida, they still do.

And, yeah, Harry Houdini.

Left a lot of good notes because.

He went around debunking a lot of these people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Huh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In the early 20th century.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I did not know that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Yeah. His mother had passed away, and he had been, in his grief, sort of desperate to contact her. But being Harry Houdini, he could identify chicanery pretty quickly and realized these were all fakes and then decided. And then got angry and decided to take them all down.

But anyway, slight digression.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There'd be a scholarship named after him.

Seems like a good way to memorialize that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And since it's in northeast Pennsylvania, it should be at St. Tikon's. We need to get on that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The Harry Houdini.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Debunking Spiritist Nonsense Scholarship.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The Houdini Museum is up there, man.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow. There is a Houdini Fund.

The Society of American Magicians.

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, sometimes you want to disappear, you know.

But so this. This points to a problem. Again, the reason we're bringing all this up is not just because it's kind of weird and cool, but it's October. But because it points to a flaw in our thinking about spirits. Right. Because, again, we're trying to think of them as things. They've got to be made of something. Right. We're thinking of them as things in a materialist sense. Right.

So they must be some kind of object that's made of something. Right. And that whether we can always see it or not, they have to have a stable visual form.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. By the way, I have to say that we just got an actually from YouTube. They said it's not very important in the long run. But Sebastian Shaw, not David Prowse, appeared on Endor's Forest Moon. Sorry for nerding out. You don't have to be sorry for that. Never, ever. Not on this show.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We'll accept it. This is Sebastian Shaw, the actor.

Not the black king of the Hellfire Club in X Men comics, Correct?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

I caught that reference as well. Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, right, so this is one sort of flaw in our thinking. Right. Is trying to think. Trying to give them a body and think of what their body is made of. And that points to the bigger problem. And the bigger problem is that we want to think of spirits as Humans.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We want to think of them as basically like us. Right. And you know, if we're talking about the spirit of a departed human, than they are in some ways like us. Right. But in other ways not. And if we're talking about a spirit that was never a human.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And then when you get to the Holy Spirit especially.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Then they're definitely not like us. Right.

So it's not just these are ethereal humans.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or these are humans who have wings or these are humans who can turn invisible or walk through walls or whatever else. Right.

These are either not exactly a human now until the resurrection, or not a human at all.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And I mean, you can tell that. I mean, correct me if I'm getting this wrong, but you can tell that this idea is really old. Because for instance, when Christ appears after his resurrection, doesn't it say that the disciples supposed that they saw a spirit one of the times they encountered him?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And he says, handle me and see, for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So, yeah. So there's this idea where we want to treat them as other selves and this happens in other areas. Right. I mean, people do this with their pets, try to turn them into humans. People do this with. Right. All kinds of non human things. But we also do this with.

With spirits. Right. So spirit is not a subcategory of human.

Nor are human and spirit.

Subcategories of some third thing. Right. Other than created being. But then that includes everything except God.

So that's not helpful.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so really, instead of looking at a spirit as an other self, someone else like us, we have to look at a spirit as an other other.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This is a different, different thing. Right. And so.

Now that we've taken that negative approach again, we're still not all that much closer to what a spirit actually is. Right. Now that we've covered the isn't part.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We'Re kind of trying to define it, you know, from 30,000ft up, like a sort of taxonomic.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, yeah, right. And when we've talked about, obviously this show is called Lord of Spirits, we've talked about spirits a lot. Right. In different contexts.

And usually when we talk about them, we've talked about them from the top down.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We've talked about God creating them. We've talked about how like angelic beings and then the saints are the means through which God administers his creation. We've talked about how God has allowed the demonic spirits to rebel in order to Use them for this greater purpose, to bring about repentance in people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Sort of big picture kind of cosmological stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. And.

We'Re not disavowing any of that, obviously, but that entire approach doesn't help us with this question of what spirits are, because we aren't up at the top above them to look down on them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And we're not God.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So going from up top. Right. And trying to understand what they are based on these, these things isn't going to give us a definition. So as we move into our second half teaser, we're going to be going at this, to answer this question, what is a spirit? We're going to be going in the opposite direction. Instead of going from the top down, we're going to go from the bottom up.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So we're going to start actually with things that are below humans and go to humans and then work our way up to.

What a spirit is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Alrighty. Well, we're going to go ahead and take our first break and we will be right back with more Lord of Spirits.

Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.

[Elisa Bielatic Davis]

Hi, I'm Elisa Bielatic Davis. I love Sunday school and youth ministry, but I think we all know that faith is formed in the home. Orthodoxy is not a collection of ideas you can teach in class or hand off in a program. It's not a list of theological propositions. Orthodoxy is a way of life. It's a way of seeing the world. It's living your life for Christ every day. And that's what we need to pass on to our children. Our holy tradition offers us so many treasures, but sometimes there's so much that we don't quite know where to begin. We read books about wonderful monastics praying in caves. We read about saints giving up their lives. But how do you pray in a busy house full of kids? And more importantly, how do you teach the kids to pray, to fast, to love Christ and to chase after Him. That's why Caleb Shoemaker and I wrote the book Blueprints for the Little Church. It's for anyone, young or old, newly converted or born Orthodox, who wants to establish beautiful Orthodox rhythms in their home. The Church offers us so many ways to set our lives and our hearts to the beat of holy Orthodoxy. We want to help families find that rhythm living and growing with the tools that God has given his church. You'll find blueprints for the little church at the Ancient Faith Store and wherever you buy books, or if you prefer, check out our ebook and audiobook. And if your family would love a weekly podcast where you can learn about the faith together, join me and Christina Wenger on Tending the Garden of Our Hearts, a podcast for the whole family on Ancient Faith Radio.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We're back now with the Lord of Spirits with Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung. If you have a question, call now at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.

Welcome back. Welcome back, everyone. It's the second half of the Lord of Spirits. We just talked about what spirits are not and gave some examples of what they are not. As we mentioned at the end, we've been sort of taking a top down approach, looking at spirits from kind of the grand cosmological story. But now we're going to take it very much from the bottom up and begin with things lower than ourselves. So you're welcome to give us a ring at 855-AFRA D I O AF radio or 855-23-7-2346. And we would love to talk to you during the second half of the show. Okay. So bottom up, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Unless. Unless you're calling to defend that Munsters movie because you're just being a contrarian. No one liked that movie.

Don't even.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I hear you. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Get away from me with that. Anyway, back to it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So opinionated Father Stephen.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Guy calls him like I sees him.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

All right. So where were we? We're gonna talk about bats.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. We're going back to our friend Thomas Nagel.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Good old Thomas Nagel. Who. And he doesn't know what it's like to be a bat.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No. And demonstrated to all of us that none of us do either.

Right. So, hey, there might be first time listeners. Thomas Nagel.

Wrote a famous paper in philosophy called what is it like to be a Bat?

Basically pointing out that we don't know and we can't know as humans.

We can imagine what it's like, what it would be like for our human consciousness and awareness to be in a bat body.

Because of like a witch or something.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or that horrible episode of Tos Cat's Paw.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, believe it or not, there's actually a Wikipedia article about this called what is it like to be a Bat? Question mark.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

Right. But that's not what it's like to actually be a bat. Right. That's that humanizing again.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But what. One of the things that paper presupposes is an idea regarding consciousness and awareness that is more recent than I think people realize.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hmm.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Even in like the 19th century, somebody like Hegel. Right.

Basically thought that animals were automatons. They're like machines.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. That they just. They're sort of pre programmed and they do things based on pre programmed instinct.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. But they don't have trained a dog to do tricks. You were just reprogramming it, essentially.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Your dog doesn't love you. He just.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Your dog isn't aware that it exists.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There's no awareness.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so consciousness was treated as.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sort.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Of like, you know, binary one or zero.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or like a light switch.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

When you get to humans, the light's on.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Humans at the end of. I mean, we're Talking about the 19th and early 20th century, the end of evolution, consciousness just appears.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And it's accidental. Right. In that, in that kind of framework.

But everything below humans on the scale was at a zero. The lights are off. Right.

That's kind of counterintuitive to us even now. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, most people do believe that their dogs love them.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Well, but I mean, we got to be fair. In the 19th century, people had pet dogs. Right, Right, right. They were interacting with them. It was just. There was. There was not an acknowledgement of sort of consciousness, of reasoning, of, you know, as we found out more and more that animals have language abilities. Right. Communicative abilities between them.

And so the. There is a revolution in philosophy of mind and in consciousness research to say, hey, clearly a lot of these animals are conscious. Right. They're able to actually make decisions.

Right. To choose to value one thing more than another thing.

They're not just purely driven by. By impulse.

And so animals do have some kind of consciousness, some kind of awareness. Right. But it's at the same time as. As Nagel is pointing out. That doesn't mean.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What consciousness and awareness means for them is the same thing it means for a human.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, clearly your dog's consciousness is not as complex as yours.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sorry. For people who. Sorry. To all those people out there who refer to their pets as their children.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But I have one heathen dog who's pretty clever. I believe, in a devious way.

And, and to be fair to the people talking about dogs as their children.

It is a scientific fact that when a dog owner looks their dog in the eyes and pets them. The same chemical is secreted in their brain and the dog's brain as in a parent and a baby human.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

How about that?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So they're being chemically tricked into thinking that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, to be fair to them, okay.

You've been in the south long enough. You're giving backhanded compliments. That's good. Yeah.

Congratulations, man. You've enculturated.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But so Nagel's making the important point, right? That when we say, okay, so these animals are conscious, we're not just giving them a one instead of a zero.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. But that this is consciousness and awareness is more of a continuum, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's. It's more that there are levels of consciousness and levels of awareness.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that the. And this is why. So if we're. If we're trying to talk about, like, what is the consciousness or awareness of an angel, like, as we've said before on the show, this is what we have no idea.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Any more than a dog understands what it's like to be a human.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or a pig or a dolphin knows what it's like to be a human, whatever smart animal you want to use. A chimp.

A bonobo.

And of course, then when you're talking about God, he's not even on this continuum, right? This isn't even a relevant category of God. This is a category of created beings. Right?

So then the question becomes. So if we acknowledge, okay, so there are these different levels of consciousness, and there are levels of consciousness above human consciousness and awareness, and there are those below human consciousness and awareness, Then the question is, well, where does that sort of end if we go below?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Do.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Do worms have consciousness? Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

And so does my oak tree have consciousness? Is there a point where we get to a zero?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Is there a point where we get to just. The lights are out, Right. There's nothing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Zero. Kelvin consciousness.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

Yeah. Absolute zero. Yeah.

So one place we could suggest maybe drawing that line would be between animal life and everything else.

Right? So, sure. An earthworm's consciousness would be super rudimentary, Right. Like very low level, you know, 0.00000001. If human consciousness is one. Right. But then you could say, okay, well, that's the dividing line is animal life versus everything else.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Problem with that is that we're discovering more and more that there is some kind of plant consciousness.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Like they are able to communicate. Some plants are able to kind of communicate with each other. Like, I've Read about forests, for instance, that pass information through their roots, which is crazy to think about. And not even just like aspens. Right. Which is a single organism with a whole bunch of things up top that look like trees. They are trees, I suppose. But. But that. That separate organisms talk to each other.

You know, very. A very kind of, if I may say so, fellowship of the ring kind of moment with the old forest, you know, just throwing that out there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You're just. You're just sitting raw meat to the all one podcast people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know, I know, but it's. The concept is very relevant.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But. Yeah, and they've done studies recently where plants, they can, like on a tape, play. Okay, kids, a tape is a magnetic strip. They could take a recording.

And you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Put a pencil in the one hole and you turn it and.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

So they take a recording of the sound of water. So there is no actual water. It's just the sound of running water, like a stream. And they play it near a plant, and the plant's roots will start to move in that direction toward the sound.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's crazy pants.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

So, yeah, so there are a lot of things like this that we're discovering. Right. So, okay, so instead of the earthworm being 0.00001, we'll say a plant is 0.0000001. Right.

But basically we could say the dividing line is, well, something that's alive versus something that isn't. Right. So like a rock.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

But.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But right.

If we're understanding this kind of conscious awareness as the ability to send, receive, process information, for example. Right. Then.

Plate tectonics would represent a type of consciousness.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

Right. Well, that's kind of weird, you know, to imagine.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And a computer network. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, neural nets are completely inert, you know, in terms of biological life. It's modeled after human brains, I guess, on some level. Although I don't really know anything about this stuff, but that's what I've heard.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And so we're not saying, again, like the Earth, you could talk to it. Right. And it's like a woman, she would talk to you. Right. Because that's humanizing. That's making the humanizing mistake. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But.

Where we ultimately get to is that any ordered system that transmits or processes information has some kind of at least tiny rudimentary level of consciousness.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Is somewhere toward the one end, toward the bottom end, but is on sort of this. This spectrum of. Of consciousness.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So that said.

We'Re gonna be hard on people's heads. I think with some of the second half.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It'S. Okay. We're ready to go there. It's been a while since we did a lot of mind bending, but this time I talked about the mind in your stomach.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, yes. Now, for the record, I don't want people to start calling me Dr. Mindbender because I have a full head of hair and I lack his incredible mustache.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I have occasionally thought of buying a monocle, but I don't think I could pull it off.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Someone's gonna send you a monocle now, by the way.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I'll take a monocle.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They would watch to send me a monocle, like 2 times magnification. I will accept this as a gift.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Photos will be required, of course.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Well, that's fair enough.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Doesn't cost me anything.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So one of the byproducts of what we just said, right. Is going to be that any given organism.

And we're going to use the human organism here as an example because we can, as we were just saying, we could best talk about human consciousness.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's the kind of consciousness and awareness that we can know the most about and understand the best because we're humans. Any dogs listening? Sorry.

Cats don't pay attention to anything, so we don't have to worry about that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They don't.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're completely solipsistic.

But so, like using a human as Exhibit A, you contain.

Multiple systems that would have a level of consciousness.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, I mean, I've heard people talk about, like, that. Your gut is kind of almost another brain on some weird level.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, Your gut biome. The bacteria in your gut biome. Right. Who keep you alive. They communicate with the bacteria in other people's gut. Biomes through the air.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

See, that's creepy.

I mean, I never watched Alien because, as you know, I do not watch anything that even reeks of being a horror film.

You know, on purpose.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The new Hellraiser is really good on Hulu.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. No, I'm not. No, not even a little bit. That's the one with the pins in the head, I think.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, but yeah. The idea that there are gut bacteria that somehow are trading information inside me that are then speaking in some way to those in other people. I mean, that is kind of like Alien level stuff right there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're having ongoing conversations with the rest of your immediate family's gut biomes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

House.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Together.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This is scarier than last year's Halloween episode. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. But they're bacteria. They're They're a separate organism.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. The bacteria are not you, but you certainly can't live without them.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And through that communication, we're saying, see, so there's a level. There is a certain very low level of consciousness going on there that is contained within you. That is your gut biome. Right.

This is true of some of the organs of our body.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So the.

The human heart.

Regulates its own rhythm.

And.

Biological males and females of the human species have slightly different heart rhythms. And if someone gets a heart transplant from someone of the other biological, sexual, their heart that they receive will maintain its previous rhythm in their body.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. So it still beats like a girl or a boy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And so other examples are the parts of your brain, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. There are parts that are kind of going off on their own and doing their own thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Your brain stem is not only like regulating your breathing and your. Your heart rate and stuff.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But your brain stem is adjusting those things.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It is receiving information from your body about the oxygen level of your body and therefore causing you to breathe harder or to yawn.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I say we're all going to yawn now, since you mentioned that. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So. And that's not the subject of your conscious thought.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No. Yeah. I'm not saying they're going, okay, time to yawn. Go.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And your conscious awareness. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's like having a little separate stage manager in there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's telling the stage hands what to do.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Your cerebellum is governing your balance. Right. And motion without you. Right. Thinking about it, mostly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So you're saying that my brain has brains?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Do they taste different parts, taste different to zombies? Or is that again last year's Halloween episode?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The mind is a terrible thing to taste.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I feel like I alley ooped that one for you there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, you did.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

See, that's a call back to a previous episode where I couldn't remember that word. Yes. Thank you, everybody. You wouldn't believe how many people wrote in to tell us that. We must have gotten 10 alley OOP emails at least.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, I'll generate some more emails.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Is calling that an alley oop a reference to the old alley oop 50s novelty song?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, wow, you know, I don't even know that one.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or is it a reference to the comic strip Alley oop?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. In Let us know everybody.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

Right. But so. And then we could go to the, you know, different cells of the body that are receiving information and regulating things and process.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

The human body then.

Right. And so the human organism, you, The Listener. Are made up of a big pile of interconnected.

Small consciousnesses that are all operating together.

To keep you alive and allow you to function and do the things you do.

And then what we think of as our consciousness, as our awareness. Right. Our point of attention, our noose.

Is something that comes in over the top of all of those sort of subsystems that are all operating.

And so then what are we talking about then, when we talk about that consciousness? So this is what is called. Right. You see this in Aristotle, you see this in the Church Fathers, you see this in Saint Maximus. This is what we're talking about when we're talking about the natural will.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's the natural will because it's related to our nature as a human.

It is this directedness and propulsion that moves any given thing. Anything that has a nature. Right. Has a natural will that moves it toward its telos, toward its perfection, toward its completion.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so there are various elements of that, for example. Right. Stay alive. Right. There's sort of these basic. These basic things.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that natural will of the whole.

Will override or at least can override the individual subconscious.

Of the various elements. Right. So if you put your hand in a fire, you're not going to make a conscious decision to pull it out.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, it's very much unconscious.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. The nerves. But that information goes somewhere and something pulls your hand out. Yeah, right. But you're not making a conscious decision to do it. But you can at least attempt. Right. To consciously keep your hand in the fire despite the pain.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

For some reason, for some larger reason.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, yeah. An overriding thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Like. Like if you, you know, if the gom jabbar is being held at your throat, for instance, you might do that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is a little death that leads to total obliteration. Anyway.

So. And then this natural will is where the human energy comes from. Our human activity. Right. Our human activity is the working out of.

This natural will.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay. Yeah. Which, I mean, the theological, technical term for this is energies. Right. Energy in Working.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Working in the world. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Working. Yeah. Operation, if you're gonna. If you need a Latinate word.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right.

And so.

We'Re there.

A human spirit. What we're getting to here is that a human spirit is this complex of faculties centered around the natural will and energy.

Your will and your activity, that will and that activity that comes over top, that comes over and above.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sort of an organizing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

As an organizing principle, as a directing principle.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. But with a sense, with Consciousness, you know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Exhibits. Conscious. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

Okay. So I mean, if someone's trying to say, well, what's my spirit? Could you say it's the me that I feel is me? Right. The. The. Well, the awareness.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Now you're talking about the. Now you're talking about the self. That's a whole other rabbit trail.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. All right, all right, all right. Yeah. But I mean, we all have. We all have, for instance, this constant experience of being ourselves. Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, maybe.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Oh, okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, there's a. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I don't know what it's like to be anything else.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. But there are also experiences. Right. Going back to our noose episode, there are experiences of losing the concept of self.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay, sure.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. So, yeah. So I don't want to hang a lot on self.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Of the idea of self.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But. But this is something sort of adjacent.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This is more. Again, like when we talked about the news, we're talking about awareness.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This is the lights being on.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. We're not always aware of ourselves.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But we're always aware. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Our awareness can be directed at other things other than ourselves.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, please, everybody.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Even potentially to the point of self forgetting. Right, Right. So, yeah, we're talking about this overriding awareness, and we're talking about this.

Natural will and activity of ourselves as a whole.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So that's a spirit. Right. Within a body.

Right. And so what we're going to say then about a spirit not in a body is going to be parallel to that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This is where it's going to get harder, people.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

A spirit of a disembodied human is that will and that activity.

That sort of complex of faculties.

Continues to exist, but without the physical body.

Which it was animating, which it was making alive.

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. That would be a disembodied spirit, and.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It continues to exist.

In an unseen way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right? Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so then this is what we're going to say about angelic beings.

This is what we're going to say about demonic beings. That there is this will and this activity.

That exists without a material body.

A meat body, that it is animating.

And organizing. In most cases now, there are cases like demonic possession.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But we'll get more to that kind of thing in a minute.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so just to kind of hit a couple of objections off of the pass here.

You know, if you're talking about will and energy, will and activity that direct.

You know, even just a human person, a human body. Right. But will and activity that direct groups of people. For instance, someone might say from a materialist point of view, like, well, that's just your perception. Right. That it's just an observable sort of phenomenon. It's not that there's some personal being actually doing that. You know that, like, the spirit of the age is just a metaphor. Right.

But the reason why we would argue that that's not the case is that there is, in fact, will and action.

There's something more than just the kind of the collective set of whatevers.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Will and action implies a subject.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. There's some object doing the willing and the acting.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Right. And so this is actually how spirit is related to wind.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hmm.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So here's a practical example from one of my heathen dogs.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

One of my dogs, Sasha, she is goofy and adorable. Not the sharpest tool in the shed.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And she. If she is out in the backyard.

And she's trying to do her business, or she's trying to figure out what a smell is or whatever, she's about in the backyard and the wind blows. Right. She doesn't understand what it is. She thinks something is touching her.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or pushing on her, but then she turns towards it and she can't see anything. She does this all the time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Like, we can't take her outside to do her business when it's windy because of this. She's just constantly distracted and freaking out about what's touching her.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. There is this movement. There's this activity. There's something happening. But there's no visible agent. Right. No visible subject that's acting upon her.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This has become very poltergeist now.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And so she can't sort of. Sort of process that something's happening. There has to be something that's doing this.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Even when we say the wind is blowing.

Right. Well, what's the wind if it's not the blowing?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, it's not air. Air might be being blown.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So we even, in speech, have trouble with that. We have to put an agent there doing an activity.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Yeah. By the way, I just had to look this up. Poltergeist literally means rumble ghost.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, well, there you go.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Isn't that great? Rumble Ghost.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're here.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's my band name.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

Is that a dead rumble Fish? Anyway.

So this is why we get, you know, Christ saying the Holy Spirit blows where he will, and no one knows where he comes, has come from or where he is going. Right.

So this is sort of built into the concept in that way. This is the connection to wind is that wind is.

An analogy for something that is sort of an agency with no immediately identifiable agent.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

An activity with no identify, immediately identifiable actor.

Right.

And so then who the particular spirit is would be the actor or the agent or the one. Right. Doing the thing. Right. But that's. That's the idea connection there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so when we talk about.

Angelic beings now, angelic and demonic spirits, we're talking about levels of consciousness, as we said, that are above the human, that are sort of further up that sliding scale.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So they have a broader effect.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, they have another level of consciousness. Right. We can't describe it because we're not them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We don't know exactly what that's like. We don't know exactly what that entails. But if consciousness is based on organization and transmission of information, then the place to look for.

Right. These higher level of consciousness. Right. Just as my human consciousness is of a higher level than the consciousness of my organs or the bacteria in my gut or.

My cells, the place to look is then the next step up in terms of organization.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay. So communities.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So we're looking at a place, a community, a clan, a tribe, a family, a people group. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. And. And again, like, to kind of counter that to. To head another objection, a similar objection off of the past, you know, someone might say, well, families and communities are really just a bunch of individuals who happen to be doing things together. Right. They're like atoms, but I mean, atoms. Right. Atoms do things together and they make molecules and they. And they make compounds. And that's something more and other than simply the collection of atoms.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like, it's not just water.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Water has properties that hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms don't have.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, totally. Right, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And so it's not. The whole. Is not just the sum of its parts.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this is obviously experientially true too. Right. That when one of these groups forms.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There is a level of consciousness above that of the individual human persons who make it up.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That has a kind of will and has a kind of activity.

Right. And so this from the bottom up is what ancient pagans, ancient folks called the spirit of a place or the spirit of a city or a people or this clan or this family.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And they didn't conceptualize it as a metaphor.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. It is the identifier for that higher level of organization and will. And sometimes that will overrides.

The will of individuals.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. That's where it gets weird and.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And is willing to sacrifice certain of those individuals for the good of the whole organism. Right. The way you might grand in the fire.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, like an example that we know even from our own experience is that crowds of people tend to do things that individuals would not.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, they have their own kind of mind.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. That there's a spirit of a place and a time that people are caught up into.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so the. These collective units take on a will.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Of their own. They have activities of their own.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Things that they work together. Right. And then do.

And so the spirit of that unit is the collection of the collective will and energy that has its own overriding factor. So then how does.

The person who is within one of these units.

Which we all are.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Modern culture has done its best. Right. To atomize us and separate us from all of these. And that's why we keep feeling like we're dying for the same reason that if I cut off my finger, it wouldn't do well on its own.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because remember, the spirit is what animates the thing and gives it life.

So the person who's in one of these.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There is this collective will and energy of the whole. Of the spirit of the whole. And the person has to choose whether to participate in. To take part in, to cooperate with, to synergize with. Right. Synergia. To take their will and their energy and merge it. Cooperate with that of the group. Or to resist.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Which, I mean, this is going to seem like a weird example, but really it is the one that popped into my head, which is why, you know, when I worked the 1997 Jimmy Buffett concert at Hardee's Walnut Creek in Raleigh, North Carolina, concertgoers could either choose to contribute to the river of beer and vomit in the cable troughs, or they could choose not to do that. But you wouldn't think that contributing to that would be the kind of decision that someone individually would make. But weirdly enough, a lot of people made that decision, and then the poor stagehands had to pull those cables out of there. So we were choosing actively, obviously, to resist it. But, yeah, I mean, there's.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, it's like, been at Woodstock 99.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I avoided that quite on purpose.

Let that be a lesson to you all.

But, yeah, there's.

You know, and we've all had experiences like this where you're in a crowd of people, particularly, or even in just a small group of people, and everything is kind of going one way or another.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Or just your Family.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Just your own family, your family dynamic.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Right. Family systems. We talk about family systems. Yeah, yeah, yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so.

This, this, when we're talking then, about those systems, this gives us important language and understanding. Right. That we can only have.

From our Christian perspective.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So sometimes we're in a unit that the spirit is like, corrupt.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Whether it's a family, whether it's. Right. Just our culture, whether it's.

Any other kind of group that we join. And it's corrupt and it's evil. Right. And it's corrupting.

The language we need to use to understand the change is not just, hey, I need to go and convince all of these folks.

Right. That what we're doing is a bad idea. And, hey, here's a good thing to do.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It's not cognitive.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's not a collection of individuals.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It has a life of its own. The language we need to use is the language of, like, exorcism.

We need to remove the spirit that is there animating it now.

Then understand how to invite a different one.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like getting rid of Aphrodite and bringing in Saint Demetrius if you're in Thessaloniki.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

But so, yeah, we have this idea.

Bred into us, regardless of what you think of it as a form of government of sort of democracy.

Right. That all of these collectives are just individual.

A bunch of individual people who all have their own thoughts and ideas. Right. And any events that happen.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or any kind of larger movement of anything is just that there's a whole bunch of people who happen to have the same ideas who have convinced each other.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like voting.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. They're all voting. Yeah, yeah. And if. If. And those people were all perfectly free to accept completely different ideas, and if they had, then things would have gone in the opposite direction. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so we just need to go and reason with people and with individuals and convince enough of them. Right. To. To go this other way. But again, that isn't how any of this works. Right. As. As we've talked about recently on the show, these ideas come after the fact that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

These ideas come after the fact. In fact, we've talked about where thoughts and ideas come from before.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, Right. They come from outside. People are permeable.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They come from outside.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so the ideas that are going to arise in a community that's animated by a corrupt and evil spirit are going to be corrupt and evil ideas.

Right. 20th century history is full of this.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, indeed.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's not a question of irrationality.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Some of the people, you know, Maximilian Robespierre was pretty sure he was the most rational man on the planet.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. And I recall. I can't remember what I was reading. This is from years ago, but I recall.

That.

A major kind of turning point in terms of people's.

Awareness of this reality is in looking at the evil of the Holocaust. Because a lot of what was going on in that was simply the sense of, well, so how do you kill millions and millions of Jews? Well, it's basically a big engineering problem. They just sort of solve that.

And the reason why, I think that was in some ways a turning point in awareness of this was.

There was this idea that.

Lots more education equals a more moral world.

But the level of education and sort of scientific knowledge required to kill millions of Jews was very high. You know, it was a big engineering problem, and yet it did this deeply, deeply evil thing. But that's because there was a different spirit animating that, you know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. And.

I said I was going to get in trouble later in the show, but what the heck.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So is this that moment? Okay, everybody, maybe take out your pens.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And people forget, Right. That Hitler's original plan was to wipe out about 90% of the Slavs, take their land and enslave the rest.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

To work for the glory of Germany. Why was he going to do that? Well, he looked at all the other nations in Europe, and this was built into European culture and American culture, for that matter. The way all of them became wealthy was through colonialism.

They went to other countries, they killed. Look at Belgium and the Congo. Right. They killed most of the people and enslaved the rest and therefore enriched their home country.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, this is what empire does. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And Germany had no colonies, so he decided to make some in Eastern Europe. That's what the whole Lebensraum plan was.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So this wasn't a thought that just Hitler had because he was a very naughty man. Right. He was. He was just an evil dude, born evil. And so he came up with this horrible idea. This idea was in the spirit of the age. This is what everyone was doing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This is what the United States was doing in the. On its western frontier.

This is what all the nations of Europe were doing in their various colonies. They were all doing this.

And so the idea came to him because it was in the air.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. He committed to that spirit of the age, the zeitgeist.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In the spirit of the age. Right. That's where it was. So that is a sort of perfect example.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Of this of these ideas emerging. And then racial ideologies emerged out of that. These people weren't racists, and so they went and set up colonies. These people went and set up colonies and did this. And then to justify it, they adopted racial ideology.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And you get, you know, eugenics and all that kind of.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All those ideas, again, come nasty stuff to justify what we're doing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, yeah, these are perfect examples. This is where ideas come from. And so this is why what this is usually called in the New Testament, the Zeitgeist, or the spirit of the age, is the world.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. To be distinguished from the world as in, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Not the cosmos, like as in the creation, not the material creation. The world is talking about this spirit of the age, the powers or principalities. This is always demonic.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And the Bible uses that word in both of those ways. And it's important to distinguish. Like when Christ said he came to, you know, not to condemn the world, but to save it, he doesn't mean he did not come to condemn the spirit of the age, but to save it, you know? Right, yeah, yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

St. Paul says that the devil is the God of this world.

Swell.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

G. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's what he's talking about there.

And so Christianity has always been over against that and has always seen the thoughts and ideas that come out of that as being what has to be fought and resisted in spiritual warfare and in the Christian life.

So hopefully that gives a better idea historically of what.

What we're talking about. And so what this means is that when the scriptures tell us to test the spirits.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This doesn't mean, hey, when a spirit appears to you, Right. When the force ghost shows up, it says, I bring you a message, you give it some kind of quiz to determine if it's an angel or a demon.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right? Yeah, right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's not what we're. That's not what we're talking about.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. It's not a kind of taxonomic activity to determine what its species is, you know. Could you please provide a sample of your ectoplasm so I can take it back to the lab?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. It's the spirits we encounter, the spirit we encounter in the woods, the spirit we encounter in our civic life, the spirit we encounter in our parish community, the spirit we encounter in our family, the spirits we encounter. Right. Determining whether this spirit is fallen or unfallen. And this is the divide. Every spirit which is good, every spirit which is angelic, is going to lead us to Christ.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

What direction is this being taken? What's the fruit?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And every spirit which is fallen is going to lead us to destruction.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And this is why. And this is why, you know, martyrs are essentially dissidents, dissidents against the spirit of the age. They're, they're. They will not comply. Right. With, with that, you know, but we're not taught as Christians simply not to comply with any. Any spirit. That's not even a possibility. We. But rather to be conformed to the Holy Spirit. Right, right. But we're supposed to resist the spirit of the age. It's manifold multifarious manifestations.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And so Jupiter is not an idea somebody came up with someday.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Jupiter is the spirit that motivated Rome to go out and create a wasteland of the world and call it peace.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

To quote livey or paraphrase livey. Right. And that's what the scriptures mean when they say all the gods of the nations are demons.

They are spirits which are leading you to destruction.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. It's funny because demons are these kind of lesser spirits. And so it's a sad commentary, essentially. Like the nations are being led by these petty tyrants.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Yeah. And that, that's not just a hypothetical thing where he's off somewhere. There's some demon who's like a black, dark, smoky, brimstone y force ghost rubbing his hands together with horns and a tail. Right. Like, I'm going, you know, here's what I'm going to get them to do, you know, and then he convinces people, like, to go along with his plan by offering them things. Right. Like that's not how it works.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But that spirit is at work, right. And people experience it. They feel it. When the Romans gathered together, when they held one of their triumphs and paraded the slaves they'd taken, Right. Giving glory to the general who won the victories. Right. That spirit was there.

Right. Motivating it. And everyone there encountered it and felt it there and chose to participate in it and follow it and be transformed by it or to rebel against it and reject it. And there were consequences for the latter.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, with that said, we're going to go ahead and take our second break. And we will be right back with the third half of the Lord of Spirits.

Father Andrew Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.

Hi, I'm Father Andrew Stephen Damick and with my co host Father Stephen DeYoung. I'm one of the podfathers behind the Ancient Faith Radio Live Call in prison program, the Lord of Spirits. Father Stephen and I have been blown away by the overwhelming success and popularity of our little show about angels, demons, saints and yeah, giants too. Apparently there's a real hunger out there for content that addresses the spiritual reality that permeates all of creation in spite of the rampant materialism of modern society. But did you know that this programming on Ancient Faith radio is only made possible by its listeners? Not only Lord of Spirits, but all of the live shows on AFR Orthodoxy live. Ancient Faith today Everyday Orthodox Search the Scriptures, Live with the lows and stewardship calling. All of these owe their existence to the generosity of people like you. Without your monetary support, there wouldn't be marathon discussions of Zeus or Hades or the Nephilim on Thursday nights. There wouldn't be an Ancient Faith radio at all. Take the opportunity today to add your contribution to those of the other faithful AFR fans who help keep shows like Lord of Spirits on the air. Participate in the ministry of Ancient Faith Radio. Partner with us to bring the Orthodox Christian faith to the world. Become a donor today by going to ancientfaith.com and clicking on Donate in the upper right hand corner. Thanks Nick advance for your support.

We're back now with the Lord of Spirits with Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung. If you have a question, call now at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.

You know, I almost completely forgot that I recorded that promo.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, you know, I, I hope people got the message, you know, of that important commercial. But I have to say I was distracted by the best part of it, which was the public domain sports montage music that was playing.

It's true.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We, we make use of royalty free music on Ancient Faith radio.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

See, and if people give to Ancient faith, maybe someday I can just play clips of all these songs I sub reference.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There you go. Well, that would be pretty expensive.

Probably. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh come on.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, once in a while. Once in a while though we do actually purchase licenses for music.

So, you know, just putting that out there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But can I get William Shatner's version of Spirit in the Sky?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh boy. You know, so we could, we could theoretically play a little clip of William Shatner's Spirit in the sky if we were to offer commentary about it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I can just gush about it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right, exactly. So that would then fall into the fair use doctrine of copyright law. But again, it would just have to be a clip and we'd have to be for the purposes of commentary and review.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Especially when you get to the guitar solo in Frampton, Peter Frampton just comes alive.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right, right.

It's true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There's nothing better than.

A song written and performed by a Jewish person.

About Christ. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In the folk rock genre.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I do have a soft spot in my heart for the Norman Greenbaum original.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But it's true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Also Jewish.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. The Shatner version is pretty great. Did I mention to you, by the way, that Shatner is a litvak. He is of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So just putting that one out there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And Canadian nationalistic pride is now.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's not nationalistic pride, it's. I don't know what it is exactly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But yeah, Lithuania uber alles.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I don't know. Wow, that's very dark considering where we.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Just were in the previous episode. I know no bounds.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Thank you for that humility machine. That is your Dutchness.

All right, so it's the third half. Feel free to give us a ring. 855 AF radio. We'd love to talk to you about spirits, but speaking of the spirit in the sky, that's what this third.

Half of the episode is about.

All right, where are we now?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So now that we have some kind of at least working, if brain hurting idea of what a spirit is here in our third half, we're going to talk about how that applies to the Holy Spirit. Right? Spirit, capital S, Spirit of God.

So spoilers, where we're going to go with this, that the Holy Spirit is called the Holy Spirit because he has an analogous function. Right. He. He operates in a way that's analogous to the things you're saying about spirit in a general sense.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. He is not a particular individual of a general category called spirits.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Just like God the Father is not a dad. You know, your dad, he's not like your dad.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But there is an analogy of sorts.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And properly understood, by the way, just to clarify, in our orthodox understanding the analogy go. This analogy goes top down.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So we're.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, we're theomorphic.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Paul said the fatherhood of God is whence all other fatherhoods are named.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. Just like when St. Paul says that marriage is like Christ in the church.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Not that Christ in the church is like marriage.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The analogy is not that like the Holy Spirit is kind of like a created spirit. It's the other way around.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Created spirits.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Are we referring to created spirits as spirits because they are in some way analogous to the Holy Spirit, who is eternal?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. Important distinction, as you'd like to say, continuities and discontinuities.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So the Holy Spirit is called.

Actually most commonly when he's directly referred to, other than sort of the appearances we referred to in the first half.

Is referred to in the Old Testament as the Spirit of God.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And in the case of the spirit of God, St. Paul again brings out sort of the analogy, for example, in 1 Corinthians.

In chapter two, verse 11.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

This is one of these verses that you don't hear a lot of sermons on. Right. Or I don't remember any. I don't know. Maybe you've preached a few. Yeah. So First Corinthians 2:11. For who knows a person's thoughts except the Spirit of that person, which is in him. So also, no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God, probably, because it's just. It's not an easy verse to kind of suss out. Right. You know, it's not like, okay, here's an inspirational verse that I can really get, you know, that'll preach. Right.

But there it is, 1 Corinthians 2:11.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. And as a side note, I'm going to be very contemporary in circles that you don't run in, but first Corinthians 2:11, just on the face means that everything that God the Father knows, the Spirit knows. Sorry, James White. Okay.

I know who that is. But you don't know what it's about, I bet. But anyway, it's true.

So in the New Testament, there are a lot of different ways the Holy Spirit is referred to. The Holy Spirit being the most common one, but he is also referred to as the Spirit of Christ.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this, plus what we've said about spirits, plus what we just saw, right. In First Corinthians 2, verse 11.

Connects it to the idea of the mind of Christ.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Not that we're saying those are the same thing, but there's clearly a kind of connection there. Right. And if Spirit is referring to this consciousness and awareness of this complex of faculties, then that would make sense.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so St. Paul makes that analogy in Philippians.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Yeah. He says, you know, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.

Which I like the fact that this transition, this is the esv, makes that very clearly plural because, like some translations have this mind in you, which you Know, in Greek it is plural, but in English, of course, it's ambiguous because we've lost the thou.

The. In this case, have this mind among yourselves. And I like, also among. I mean, this definitely has this kind.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Of spirit, collective idea.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which is yours in Christ Jesus. If you're in Christ Jesus, then you have this mind among yourselves.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. But the place where St. Paul gets most explicit and draws out and develops this, the most.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Is actually in another place in First Corinthians, chapter 12. And this is a famous. What's usually described as a famous analogy or a famous metaphor.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. The body.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We're here to say. Yeah, not a metaphor, not a metaphor, not an analogy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But we need to read this in terms of what we were just saying in the second half about the way in which the spirit of a human person relates to their body.

Right.

And so St. Paul is famously going to say that the church is the body of Christ.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And again, not a metaphor. Right.

And he says you are members of it. And he's using members in the sense of bodily members. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Body parts.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He even gets one person's an eye and one person's a foot. Right.

So he makes kind of explicit that that's what he's talking about.

And so if we understand then a spirit as.

This.

This faculty that animates a body.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Then what St. Paul is saying here is that is the Holy Spirit who shares the divine will and energy with the Father and the Son.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The persons of the Trinity have one will and one energy. Right.

That the Holy Spirit then is animating.

The church as a body, making out of the diverse persons. Right. A single organism.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And that human bodies are analogous to that. Just as, you know.

The person that is. Androdamic actually consists of, as we mentioned, a bunch of self regulating elements, including organisms that are genetically other than I am. Right. Bacteria and such. And yet they are necessarily part of who it is that I am. And that's a kind of lesser version of this, of the body of Christ.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And for St. Paul, the way in which that animation of the body works out is by the diversity of gifts received from the Holy Spirit. That animation means that each part. Right. Each member, each organ within the organism.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Each cell within the organism is empowered by the Holy Spirit to perform its function, is made alive in order to perform its function within the whole.

And then because a human person still has consciousness.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And the nature of human consciousness, you can choose to cooperate or to resist.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You can cooperate with the spirit, with the Holy Spirit, you can cooperate with God, with the divine energy, you can resist.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right. And I love that word, cooperate. Co operate.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, operation is together. Synergia, if you're going to need to use the Greek version, synergize, you know, but working together to use good old fashioned plain English. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this is why from the very beginning. Right. All the way back in the book of Exodus.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Why dissenters? Why people who resist the resister, the rebel.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Against the Holy Spirit, the one who grieves. The Holy Spirit has to be removed from the body.

Because they're like cells or organs that have become cancerous.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which are self. You know, they've gotten out of control and are only kind of serving themselves.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And are self destructive, but if not removed, will destroy the body.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this is why you always have.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This means of removal.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

If there isn't. But that's something they choose, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, as difficult as it is to, you know, countenance that, it's. It's also just a reality, unfortunately.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

And so this is what we mean. Right. We say all the time, and we've said on this show that what we mean in the Orthodox Church by tradition is not a bunch of secret stuff that we decided not to write down in the Bible that, that, you know, bishops find out about when they get consecrated. Right. They tell them orally all this. No one still writes it down. But the other bishops come and whisper in their ear all the secret extra teachings.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's not how tradition works.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No. In fact, they do write it down.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Everything gets written down.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

At least in the Church of Antioch, for instance, there's a tradition of a bishop writing his profession of faith in a big book that they have in the Patriarchate and he has to sit there and write it out by hand.

And.

The bishop who ordained me as a deacon, Bishop Thomas. And didn't he make you a priest?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He did both for me, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He did both for you, yeah, yeah. He is actually, as far as we know, he's the first bishop to write in that Antiochian Patriarchal book his confession of faith in English. It's kind of cool, but yeah, it has to be written out. It's not a, as you say, a secret whispery thing in here.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So that's not what tradition is. It's not like the oral Torah in the Old Testament. And that differentiates our view of tradition somewhat from the Roman Catholic view of tradition.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

As a separate source of authoritative teaching.

But we Say that tradition is the life of the Holy Spirit in the church. Well, that sounds nice. It's also a little woo woo if you don't understand what we're talking about. Right?

Like, oh, okay, you're just trying to take all the crazy stuff you do and say, God told you. Right? Is that what you're doing? Right. That's not what we're doing. But this is this understanding of the visible church as the material body.

And the Holy Spirit is the animating Spirit of that body.

Is what we mean by that.

So the history of the Church is the history of this organism.

Body of Christ.

It's ultimately the history of the life of Christ in the world. But the Holy Spirit is the Spirit who's animating that body.

And so.

This is what we're talking about when we talk about tradition, right? And so there are things that come into that life that are accepted, things that come into that life that are rejected, right? There are things which shift form.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There are things. And that's all. Okay, right. Because we have this right, Personal, active understanding of the Holy Spirit and of tradition.

And that allows us. Right. As you know, St. Paul is talking to the church in Corinth at the level of this individual Christian community in the city of Corinth, about in the dead center of the first century A.D. right? And Corinth was about in the center of Greece at the time.

And so he's, when he talks to them about the diversity of gifts and the diversity of the members, he's talking about literally that what we would call a parish community, that there were different people there with different gifts, right. Who were part of the body in different ways. But this is true on the macro scale too, in both time and space. This is why the Orthodox Church has always allowed for diversity in a whole lot of things, from language to some of the details of liturgical ritual performance, to not just the language, but even the text and what books are in the Scriptures, right? That all of these things are not only allowed for, but they can be seen to be a good thing.

In that all of these are expressions.

Of this life. And all of these different things that are accepted and are part of the life and tradition of the Church are all part of that diversity of organs within the organism that allow the whole organism to function and be what it is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This all kind of fits together in that way, right? But it's kind of fractal. It's at the level of the individual parish community, and then all the way up to the whole church, and then all the way up to the whole church throughout time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Which is why it's so hard to sort of pin down in a kind of objectifying way.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You know, this is the orthodox view of blank.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. You know, it doesn't mean that there aren't dogmas. Right. It doesn't mean that. But if we try to use the kind of thinking that we use to.

Create taxonomies of material stuff and we try to turn that towards what the church is, then it's a total category error. Right. The animating will and energy of the church is. Is the Holy Spirit. You can't put the Spirit into a spreadsheet or a box. And by that, I don't mean that anything goes. Right. Because there are different spirits that are trying to animate us.

The question is to be in the Holy Spirit, to be in Christ. I think that's one of the problems is that there's this modernist assumption that unless you're willing to put things into boxes and you have to pick the right box, that you're saying that anything goes. But that's simply not true. We see how the Holy Spirit is consistent through the ages. For instance, there is a diversity, but it's a diversity within and animated by the one Holy Spirit.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. To do that kind of dissection and scientific kind of study, the organism has to be dead. And the church as an organism, the body of Christ is unkillable. So out of luck on, on doing that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, yeah. This, this also has.

The, the effect of meaning that the, the visible church. Right. The church has to be visible thing. Composed of actual human persons.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

It's not an abstraction, and it's not just the list of all the people who believe in Jesus.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The Holy Spirit can't animate.

Another spiritual entity.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay, so what do you mean by that?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, a spirit animates a body.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay. Right.

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

If.

Your understanding of the church is as an abstraction or as another spiritual entity, it itself is a spiritual entity.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. You don't have a spirit animating another spirit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Okay. All right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In that way. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The wind doesn't blow the wind. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's.

The, the, the. So that sort of completely fails to understand what St. Paul is saying.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which again, is not an analogy or a metaphor. Right. It's very real. He's talking about these are actual people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Who make up. Make up the, the church. So the way you. To get to the. The idea that the church is this invisible spiritual entity or an abstract category or something, you have to proceed from the basis of individualism, again. Right. That this is a collection of like minded individuals.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Even if you just want to say this is everybody who believes in Jesus. Okay. This is everyone who has a certain idea.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, that's what it is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that would mean. Right. As we've been talking about all episode, that would mean that there is no spirit animating it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. That it's just a sum. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That would make the church the same as the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the Green Party.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Which some people treat it that way.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right? That's right. Now, by the way, all those things I just named, I would hold. There's a spirit animating those too, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, right, of course.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But our person who wants to see these things as collect all of these things as just collections of individuals who have the same ideas. Right. That's the opposite of believing that there's a spirit enlivening and animating.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This, this entity. Right. And so this also means, as we've talked about on the show before several times in terms of what a body is. Right. That.

The church as the body of Christ is the embodiment of Christ in the world. The church is this nexus of powers and potentialities through which Christ acts in the world.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, isn't this what St. Paul says in Ephesians? I can't remember the chapter where he says, as he is, so are we in the world.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, that the church is Christ in the world, truly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And thus the beginning of the book of Acts, where St. Luke says in the previous text, meaning the Gospel of Luke, I wrote about all the things that Jesus began to do and to teach. Meaning that the book of Acts is all the things that he continues to do and to teach through the apostles.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. And the church is to actualize the will and energy of Christ, the will and energy of the triune God, Right. In the world.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this is directly parallel. This is why, like in the book of Revelation, when you see the beasts, right. Who are the embodiment of like world empire, Starting with at St. John's time, the Roman Empire. Right. They're always this sort of flip side parody of the church.

Right. So there's a mark of God that he puts on his people. So there's a mark of the beast.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. A dark baptism, so to speak.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And the beast from the beast from the earth is sort of this evil looking sheep, Right. This sort of fake lamb. Right. Because Christmas is portrayed as lamb. Because it's the flip side.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because these Empire, these pagan empires, these are spirits. They're actualizing the powers of evil spirits. These evil spirits in the world.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The works of the evil One is as St. John says in First John. And you know, because people get excited, this is what the giant clans are doing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

They're being the bodies of demons completely.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Given over to this. And of course, this is on a scale, but sort of the culmination of this is what's called demonic possession. Right. In a negative sense in the New Testament. A positive sense. And some other things as we've talked about. Right. Where literally a person's body is just being animated by an evil spirit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. In the fullest, weirdest, freakiest sense.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And their human consciousness has just been sort of submerged, the way my gut biomes is, by me.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's scary. That's sort of the full.

Sort of darkness of that. But this is also what, when we talked way back at the beginning a little bit, we broached some of the things from the 4th century that the Holy Spirit, that the church fathers in the 4th century said about the Holy Spirit. And this is what, for example, St. Gregory the Theologian sort of hammers on about the fact that in order to be able to divinize or deify. Right. In order for theosis to happen, because that happens through the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit must be God. So we say the Holy Spirit is divine. Divine and deifying.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. This is who he is and. And what he's doing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And so theosis happens again within the church as organism.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

As we sort of conform our will and our activity in the world to that of God.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Through the Holy Spirit who is animating and enlivening the church. Right. Following Christ. And so this is why the body of the Church is where salvation happens.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This is the locus.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this is why when the question comes up of salvation outside the church.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's always a question of the Holy Spirit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's why Saint Irenaeus goes straight to. We know where the Holy Spirit is. He's animating the body of the church. We don't know where he isn't.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There's the Spirit of God.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, no. Yeah. No one will be drawn to Christ unless the Spirit draws him.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So the Spirit is at work, the world in other places, but like the wind, no one knows where he has come from or where he is going. Right. But we know what he is doing in the church. And so this is why, if someone comes to us, right. Says what must I do to be saved. We bring them into the church because that's the place where we know it's happening.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And it's also why we know that when someone comes, the Holy Spirit has worked in them to do that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because that's what he, as the animating spirit of the Church does is, you know, brings people in and conforms them to Christ.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. This is why he's identified over and over again as this giver of life.

This is enlivening, making alive, animating.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

All right, well, some final closing thoughts.

One of the things that happens a lot these days is people look at evil happening in the world, especially when we look at it happening on massive scale.

But it doesn't just have to be in 2022. We mentioned some other evil happening earlier, just in the 20th century, but I mean, this is human history, but we know about the evil happening now. One of the things, the questions that people often ask is how could people do that? How could it come to this? I don't understand. Right. And.

As modern.

Western people, I think most people listening to this, probably that describes them, maybe not everybody, but modern Western people, it's hard for us to understand this because we tend to be individualists. And so when we ask how could it come to this? How could people do that?

How could this great evil have happened? All we can conceive of is individual people making individual decisions. And why would someone ever choose that? We can't get inside their head. Why would they ever do that? And why would all these people ever follow a person who leads them into evil? Right?

But if we.

Look with the eyes of the Christian tradition, the eyes of the scriptures, the eyes of faithfulness, then we see that there are spirits animating whole peoples, individual people, of course.

That they do have a spirit about them.

And when we recognize that, then it makes sense how you get these, these phenomena of whole peoples doing evil things, but also how you can sometimes, thanks be to God, have whole peoples who do good things. Right. Renewal does occur. The great renewal is still, from our point of view in the future.

With the resurrection and the end of the age. But there are lesser renewals that can come.

And that is why, as Christians, we always are people of hope. And it's not because we think well enough. People are going to get their minds changed, and so eventually we'll collectively have something better. That's not what it's about. Rather, it is that the spirit of God moves, that.

The holy ones who are obedient to him move. And there is A renewal that occurs centered in the people of God and that that can benefit the whole world. Right? Even the people who are not part of the church as yet. And so we see renewals once in a while, and we should be hopeful because.

We know that when we conform to that, then there is this animating character that we ourselves become conformed to. If we're individualists, we kind of don't like that idea, like, don't make me do anything. But the reality is that even if we try to be utter individualists and we try to resist the Holy Spirit, then we are actually not being truly individualists. We are simply conforming to another spirit. Or as we like to say on this podcast, sometimes there is no neutral ground. You're either following the Spirit of God and being enlivened by him and being conformed to his will and energy, or you're being conformed to the will and energy of a dark spirit. There's no middle ground. It's just not a possibility. And that's because as humans, we are permeable. We are always being animated. There's no way around it.

So we have to choose. We have to choose to cooperate with the Spirit of God if we're going to come like him, if we're going to be like Christ, if we're going to receive eternal salvation.

Well, there's a lot of things that's profoundly hopeful about that. But the one thing that I want to zero in on that's profoundly hopeful about that is that if we can lay aside our individualism.

Then we can choose to align our wills with God. But we also realize that the victory.

Does not depend on any one of us or even a collection of us. We don't have to get enough votes in order for the world to be saved. That's not how this works. It is an act, truly of God. And so then the question is, will I be on board with that or will I not? And to me, lifting that responsibility off of ourselves.

Is profoundly hopeful and freeing.

Because it means that there is a force, a good force, not the force, but there is a good spirit at work in this world. There is a good spirit at work in this world which is above and beyond all other spirits. He is the Lord of spirits. Right. So, yeah, this is kind of a tough episode in some ways to really, you know, a little bit, a little bit of mind bending. It's been a while since we did one of those, but I think it's good for us. And I believe also that we, having learned some of this, then our ability to read the Scriptures is enriched and deepened. Like especially take a look at First Corinthians, chapter 12. You know, where St. Paul talks about the body of Christ, but at the beginning of the chapter, he's talking about the Spirit. Fancy that, right? He begins talking about the Spirit and he talks about how they're been led away from idolatry and they now are in the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God gives gifts and the Spirit of God makes us the body of Christ. So, yeah, check out First Corinthians 12. Having listened to everything that we just said, and I think you're going to read it in a very different way, and I hope a very beautiful and hopeful and frankly encouraging kind of way. So, Father.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So a great man once said, I'm not here to take the temperature, I'm here to change the thermostat.

And.

I've been honest about the fact that I don't read all the emails. If you want me to read your email, the best thing to do is just be hyperbolically and insanely critical of me.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So if you, for example, go on Goodreads and write a 2000 word screed about one of my books about how I'm the evilest man who has ever lived, rest assured I will read it and enjoy it thoroughly.

But one, one thing I notice as I go out.

Trying to find criticism of myself, one thing I've seen sometimes about Lord of Spirits in particular is that we have some folks who will say they like the show, but that essentially Father Andrew and I are too sectarian.

That we, you know, we, we present information, we present things.

That they want to hear and are eager to hear and that are helpful to them.

But that we place that within this grid of orthodoxy that they don't accept or don't want to accept or aren't interested in. And so they wish that we would just sort of give them the information in a way that they could fit it into their current grid, right? Their current paradigm, their current understanding from some other Christian group or some other group in general, or just their own personal views.

And.

We'Re not going to do that. But the reason for that is that quote I started out with, we're not here to take the temperature, we're here to change the thermostat. Because one of the things.

That has.

Most greatly hindered our church life.

And our lives and influence as Christians in the modern world.

And this isn't. It hasn't hindered God, right? But it's hindered us, right, is we have a set of self imposed limits that we don't even realize are self imposed limits because we've inherited this whole framework for understanding the world and understanding human activity and understanding the way the world works and politics works and religion works and history works.

That's all based around principles that are fundamentally not Christian.

That are based in sort of hyper individualism, that are based in materialism, that are based in a secularism, that concretely means that religion is purely a set of ideas and it's disassociated from or disassociate a bull, at least from everything else.

We've inherited all this. And by holding to this, we sort of limit our own horizon and limit our own possibilities. We limit what can happen in our parishes, in our families, in our own lives.

In our communities, our civic life, in the life of the countries we live in, in the life of the world. We put these limits. This is what we can do. Again, God isn't limited by them.

And so what I at least hope to do with this show, and I've always hoped to do with this show, is not just feed a little more information into that hopper.

Not just sort of expand the paradigm a little with some new thoughts, right? Not just sort of adjust the thermostat that's already there.

But to try to bring a completely new way that isn't really new. It's new to us, right? But not new. Like to paraphrase St. John in First John, new and not new at the same time. A new to us whole paradigm for understanding who we are, what the world is, how it works, what's in it, how it relates to each other. And then based on that, a new understanding of ethics, a new understanding of politics, a new understanding of history, a new understanding of all of that, which again, isn't really new. It's always been there, but maybe now new to us. And so that means we can't just tinker with the dials, we can't just rearrange the furniture a little bit, we can't just slap a new coat of paint, right? We have to overturn everything and start over again, right? To paraphrase Nietzsche, we have to reevaluate all our values. We have to look at all the things we've thought were most precious and most important and say, how important are they really? Really?

And what is really important, right? How are we to live? What does it mean to be a Christian? What are we to be doing in the world? And when we're Willing to do that. When we're willing to do that, it's not easy, right? I'm still doing it. Everybody's still doing it. Who's even trying to do it is still in progress.

But when we do that, the first effect it has is that those limitations disappear.

The limitations we put on ourselves disappear.

The things we think in a wild dream and then say, oh, come on, right? Those things all of a sudden become thinkable, impossible, and even doable because we are no longer limiting ourselves to. Well, I'm never going to be able to convince enough people to go along with this. Or.

You know, there's. There's just not enough money for this or that kind of thing doesn't happen anymore. I believe it used to happen back in the church. You know, I'm not denying that the saints did this or that or that this or that happened, but it doesn't happen anymore. It doesn't happen to me for sure. Doesn't happen in our parish, doesn't happen in our city, right?

All of those limitations.

Sort of disappear.

Because the Holy Spirit is God, meaning he can do anything.

He can do anything he wills. And that means that we can do anything, as St. Paul tells us, when what we're doing is cooperating with that will.

Your parish can be transformed, your family can be transformed, your city can be transformed. Any country on this planet can be transformed. This whole planet can be transformed.

And it doesn't require you winning an argument. Coming up with a brilliant idea doesn't require any of that. It just requires each of us for ourselves, to cooperate with God and with what he is doing in the world. And then things start to transform and they start to happen for us, Right? For us. And great and wonderful and amazing things can happen.

So when even in this episode, and I know I do this a lot, when I say, sorry, Calvinists, or I say, sorry, somebody else took a shot at James White earlier this episode.

When I do that, I'm really not doing that out of a kind of chauvinism or out of a team spirit for the Orthodox Church. You know, my dad could beat up your dad, right?

I'm doing that because.

The kind of transformation that needs to happen.

Isn'T going to be possible for me. I'll speak for myself under those other paradigms and ways of thinking.

And we're saying that here's how you should understand spirits. Not as just this exotic and interesting thing. Ooh, I'm into this weird stuff, right? But because this understanding is going to open things up for people. We hope. Right. I may be wrong about some of it, but we hope is going to open things up for people. It's going to make things possible for people that they didn't see as possible before because they didn't see them as possible before. For them, they weren't. That's always the goal. The goal is to try to set you free from some of the shackles that the spirit of the age has put on all of us. And so hopefully that's what we're doing. And so, yes.

I will be kind of a radical sometimes, right. In calling for these things. And if you're able to listen to the show as someone who's not orthodox and who disagrees with, say, half of what I say, and you're able to find things that are individual, things that are helpful for you, God bless you. Right? You do you. Okay. But that's never going to be like our goal. That's never going to be what we set out to do. What we're going to set out to do is to try to change everything and liberate everyone, which sounds crazy except for the fact that we're hoping that we're doing this in tandem with the Holy Spirit, who's God himself.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Amen. Amen. Well, that is our show for tonight. Thank you everyone for listening. If you didn't get through to us live, we'd still love to hear from you. You can email us at Lord of Spirits and Ancient faith dot com, you can message us at our Facebook page or you can leave us a [e-mail].

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

LordOfSpirits and join us for our live broadcast on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 7pm Eastern, 4 Pacific, including next time, our annual Halloween episode.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's right, Halloween episode. Next time, everybody. And if you are on Facebook, you can like our page and join our discussion group. You can leave reviews and ratings everywhere, but most importantly, share the show with a friend whom you know is going to love it and benefit from it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And finally obey the public domain sports montage music and go to ancientfaith.com support to help make sure we and lots of other AFR podcasters stay on the air.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And hey Everybody, tomorrow, Friday the 14th of October, there should be a new Ancient Faiths radio app in your app store on your phone. Thank you, Good night. God bless you.

You've been listening to the Lord of Spirits with orthodox Christian priests, Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung, a listener supported presentation of Ancient Faith Radio. And I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders, and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and Blessing. Revelation, chapter 5, verses 11 through 12.